Children of the Dawn
by Araceil
Summary: It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea
1. Chapter 1

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter One**

It was a simple case of mathematics.

The healing properties of phoenix tears, as miraculous and potent as they may be, just were not enough. A Basilisk was a fearsome opponent in of itself, but twisted and stewed in magic as living and breathing as Hogwarts herself, nesting above a layline in slumber for a millennia, driven mad by solitude, hunger, and dark magic – only the Elixer of Life itself could have saved the child of prophesy laid out across the stone floor, sodden with blood and drain water, struggling for breath, his heart beating like the desperate stuttering flutter of a trapped sparrow's wings.

Fawkes was strong, he was young and healthy, his magic was powerful. But there was nothing he could do to save the child's failing body, not now. Perhaps had the bite been fresh, before his blood had carried the poison any further, before it had begun to eat him alive from the inside. But now...

He did not even waste the energy to try, his tears here would be useless.

He _burned_.

Infinite are the world a phoenix can travel to. Ride the heat of the sun between realities before sliding out upon a flick of light where they desired. This world, this beautiful place, so different and different again, across eons and millennia and galaxies. A thousand cataclysmic events, heroes and villains both, Gods and Demons and Mortals. A single choice shifting the balance of a world, jarring it from one future to another – and a new world is born.

 _He_ _ **burned**_. And he burned the boy with him, consuming his poisoned body in a funeral pyre fit for the King he may have one day grown to be, if given time and guidance. Burned his body so that it may never be used against him, so that Fate's chosen King would not be tainted by the machinations of others.

A thousand worlds in the blink of an eye. Clutching the spirit of the child in his talons, burning to keep the flame of his life lit. Burning, burning, _burning_.

Searching through the worlds for that familiar spark, the flicker of light so bright, pale gold like the first glimmer of light at dawn. A flicker guttering, to be snuffed.

And found him.

That same little star of light.

A little younger in body, his mind faded with pain and blood loss. A child on the verge of death, split in half, pinned beneath the corpse of his mother, the weight of her body holding his wounds shut, drawing his death out. Slow and painful, left to gasp in the mud, in the dark. A wound such as that... lethal, but simple. A slash across his stomach and back from the cleaver that tore his mother in half. Far more easily healed than the venom of the Dark King Serpent.

Mending the vessel was easy.

Joining the souls, one in the same or not, was harder.

But a Phoenix is a creature of rebirth, of renewal, of life-after-death.

He brought them together, and all three of them _burned_ within his wings, within his song.

He used the last of his strength to return, burning himself out to return to where he belonged, consuming himself entirely to be reborn.

With this, two innocent lives were saved.

With this, the hand of Fate would not be denied, and the threat that Voldemort would become would not come to pass.

The boy hero would live, and grow, until it was time for him to do his duty to the world that birthed him, until they came for him. He would survive. He was strong.

The only problem now was...

Fawkes shuffled, chirping weakly as he sloughed off the ash he created, the ash of the child's body, and stared up at the face of the young Dark Lord in waiting. Naked, helpless, and very much alone.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

 _ **000**_

It was cold, and raining.

Everything was quiet.

That was wrong. It shouldn't be quiet. Mum always told him that when things went quiet, he should run and hide and not look back.

A dog barked somewhere in the distance, and he felt what little grip on his dazed, distant awareness slip through his fingers like sand.

Hands, burning hot, rough skinned, pulled him back to waking.

They pulled him up, and turned him over, the cold crushing weight on his chest and back falling away, sliding heavily down his back to his legs as he was turned over, cradled against a leg as burning hot hands smoothed over his face, wiping dirt, blood, and sodden hair. Groping along his jawline, pressing uncomfortably, and stopping.

"He's alive! The kid's alive! Get the car! He's hurt bad!" a familiar voice shouted over his head. "You hang in there, Lumen."

 _You hang in there_.

 _ **000**_

He woke in a soft bed, numb, and slow. Blinking felt like it took an eternity as he just _breathed_. The room was dim thanks to the drawn curtains, but enough of the early morning light streamed through for him to see the rest of the room in pale light. The wall opposite him was a warm autumn brown, the other three were a creamy beige colour with a dark wooden chair railing framing them all. It was a small room, dark furniture, leaf patterned cream curtains, an open door; he was on a single bed, piled high with blankets and pillows. Against the brown wall opposite him was a chest of draws with a basin and a jug atop of it, a little woodburner sat in the corner on the right of it, empty and cold. There was a desk against the wall directly on his left, radio perched upon it next to a stack of books and magazines, and on his right...

A man slept awkwardly in a green armchair, slumped down, his bootclad feet propped up on the bedside table, his head twisted to one side in such a way that there was no doubt in his mind that he would wake with a sore neck.

"...Dave?" The name came unbidden to his lips, because he knew this man, but had never met him. He would take him out fishing while his mother was on dangerous hunts that he couldn't join her for, they would cook what they caught for her when she got back, dirty and hungry. Dave taught him how to fix a car, bits about it anyway. Would play the guitar for him, and taught him how to play the cords and his mother's favourite song. He was a complete stranger though.

Wasn't he?

A sharp pain needled his brain, right between his eyes and his temples, blossoming white-hot fire behind his eyes. He whined, high and painfilled, squeezing his eyes shut against the discomfort. The sound doing what his voice, weak and raspy as it had been, could not before as a moment later his eyes were covered by a large rough-palmed hand, bathing his vision in darkness and lessening the fiery pain. Gentle hands smoothed through his hair, continuing to shield his eyes while waiting for the pain to pass.

"How are you feeling, Lumen?" Dave asked softly.

Lumen?

"I'm... a bit sore. My side really hurts, my head too," he heard himself croak even as the Hunter carefully slid his hands away from his eyes and helped him sit up straight, arranging the pillows behind and around him to make him comfortable.

He watched in silence as Dave made his way to the jug on the dresser and poured a glass of water, and brought it over to him. He needed some help to hold the glass, his hands being bandaged into what was very much almost mittens of cotton, but the water was cool and clean, soothing the dry crackle of his throat, and washing away the distant memory of iron and mud.

"Thanks," he managed to say under his own strength, the words feeling strange in his mouth, like his lips and tongue were swollen and not moving right.

Dave smiled warmly, looking tired and wan in the morning light as he sat down. He paused, realising the older man's eyes were red and puffy, like he had been crying recently. All of a sudden he felt a horrible sinking dread in his stomach, an awful knot forming at the bottom of his neck and in his chest because -

"Where's Mum?" he asked suddenly, and Dave _flinched_.

He went cold.

"What – what happened to Mum? Where is she? She's okay, right? She's super-strong, she – "

A flash of red, a woman in the dark, broken headlights in the distance, blood in the sand, her voice screaming in his ears.

' _LUMEN!_ '

His voice died in his lungs, the sinking dread in the pit of his stomach turning solid, heavy, and spreading through his limbs. His chest hurt. Everything was fuzzy. It sounded like the world was underwater and his ears were ringing.

Dave gathered him into a tight hug, sitting on the edge of the bed, winding both arms around him, blankets and all, burying his face into his hair, smelling like old leather, dust, and honing oil – just like his mother used to. His eyes burned. Dave's voice shook. "I'm sorry, Lu, we – we didn't find any other survivors. I'm _so so_ sorry..."

He gasped, the ache in his chest easing even as something hard rose up in his throat, like a still living _organ_ , thick, red, and _hot_. He panted, moaning, "It's my fault," he gasped, "It's my fault, I wasn't fast enough, I – Mum – she – it caught up – I ran but it caught up – Mum jumped between us – it-it's _my_ fault – she died because of _me!_ "

"No, no, _no_ , Lumen, no," Dave refused, heartbroken, his voice thick and wet as he swept him up into his arms, wrapping him up tightly and pulling him into his lap. "You're barely eight years old, Lumen, it _isn't_ your fault. It was no one's fault, no one save those daemon bastards that attacked you, you hear me?" he demanded roughly, kissing his head, hugging him tightly.

"B-but Mum would be alive if I hadn't – "

"Or you might _both_ be dead," he corrected firmly, rocking him in his arms, "She would have never forgiven herself if you'd died with her," he swore kissing one of the few unbandaged parts of his forehead.

But I did, sprang unbidden to his mind. It was true, he _had_ died. Both of them had – he had been hidden by the Basilisk, and Fawkes cremated his body, he had been cut in half along with his mother, and he burned under phoenix fire.

He died.

His momma died too.

The choking feeling was back. Someone was making a horrible heaving sound, ugly, gritty sobs. It took him a moment to realise that it was coming from him, that he was clinging to Dave with everything he had, and wailing his heart out in earnest. He didn't care that he was eight, and grown up, and even allowed to fight little monsters on hunts to help his Mother. He cried, and cried, and cried.

Dave held him the whole time. Heart bleeding along with him.

 _ **000**_

The death of huntress Lilium Byrrus Proelia was written off as nothing more than a tragic accident amidst the greater tragedy of the annihilation of Saltash Outpost. A cautionary tale about road navigation, equipment maintenance, and having back-ups for your back-ups.

Saltash Outpost was a small village that straddled the border of Leide and Duscae, a modest little place comprising of a petrol station, chocobo rental, a few residential houses, a caravan, and a burger van. The electricity generator fell into disrepair with the passing of their only mechanic, Steve had been quietly maintaining it for so long that most of the residents had been completely ignorant to its very existence, believing themselves to be sat on the EXINERIS powerlines, instead of the unreliable and borderline defunct Leide mains, they continued to believe that too – until it caught fire one morning, knocking out the power. And the lights.

Getting a new generator shipped to them would have taken weeks. Meanwhile there was only seven hours until sundown. Barely enough time to pack bags, and drive to the next outpost for safety. They could have gone north to the Hunter's Prairie Outpost, but it wasn't large enough to support their numbers, so instead they opted to go south. His mother had been in the area for a hunt, and had been willing to provide combat support to expedite the evacuation in exchange for room and board when she passed through on hunts in future. Everything seemed like it was going well, the majority of the residents moving South East to Longwythe where the large outpost could support their numbers until the generator could be shipped, and set up.

Later on the road though... they realised...

The driver had taken a wrong turn, and gotten lost.

Terrified, going in panicked circles trying to find his way down desert backroads, keeping quiet so as not to terrify the children, even as the sun began to sink.

Night fell before they found their way.

And the daemons came.

The convoy broke. Several cars sped up, crashed, vanished into the darkness, swallowed by the sounds of twisting tearing metal and groaning darkness. The car that he had been in with his mother crashed, their driver hitting the accelerator and harshly pulling on the wheel until they ploughed directly into a rock-formation.

Lumen had crawled out of the wreckage and done what his mother trained him to do if ever he found himself alone in the dark with daemons on the prowl – look for the blue ribbon. That thin tongue of blue smoke that glowed in the night that would guide him to a haven, safe from the creatures of the night. He ran. Put his head down and moved, his heart in his throat. He wanted to help, but what could he do? He was eight, and daemons were the kind of thing that only good Hunters and legendary Heroes could handle. He needed to get out of the way to let his mother do her job and save people.

Then he heard that _sound_. The groaning shriek of straining metal, and the hiss of living darkness behind him.

" _LUMEN_!"

His vision filled with red as he turned, eyes wide, the Iron Giant's blade falling in front of him – his mother, backlit in broken headlights from their car, her wild scarlet mane filled with braids and beads, her scarred cheeks pale and frightened in the half-light, her freckled nose. The green eyes they shared, meeting his in the night.

The blind terror at the thought of losing him written across her face.

She threw herself on top of him, pushed him down – and the blade fell.

Pain burned across his side, hot and wet. And he knew no more of that night until he woke up in Dave's house at Headquarters, up in Meldacio, an entire country away on the otherside of Duscae in Cleigne. It would have taken days to travel that kind of distance. And he had been unconscious, fighting for his life, the entire way.

His mother had been cut in half.

His side itched where she had narrowly saved him from the same fate.

Because surely she had? She must have. Because he was here. And... his name was Lumen. He knew Dave. Dave was here. And he knew Meldacio. He had been here before, he practically grew up here as much as he had done on the road. He... Hogwarts, Harry, the Basilisk, Fawkes... it was... it had to be some kind of weird dream. Right? He was _here_ , _now_ , and looking at the maps yielded nothing of England, of Scotland, of America, or China, or even... anything. One part of him, Harry, insisted he was real, that the pain he suffered, that the things he saw, the people he knew and hated and loved were real, that magic was real, that he _existed_. But the other part of him, Lumen, was surrounded by proof of his existence, proof that his world was the real one, that he was surrounded by people he knew and loved, that magic was nothing like what Harry seemed to think it was.

But the more things changed, the more they seemed the same?

Both of their mothers had been beautiful red heads; and while Harry's was dead, Lumen had never known his father either, and didn't know if he yet lived either. His mother, Lilium (not Lily as Harry insisted), declared the man to be a coward and the _worst_ mistake she'd ever made, she was well shot of him in her opinion. The only good thing he had done in the time she had known him, was to give her a son, give her Lumen, the light of her life. Her beloved little Firefly. Her Lightning Bug.

And while neither of them had known their fathers, now they had both lost their mother's, and now... now it seemed as though Lumen may end up with a spiteful Aunt as well.

He could hear Dave arguing with his mother, Ezma, head of the Hunter HQ, in the other room arguing about him. They probably thought he was still sleeping, but, he had learned from a young age as both Harry and Lumen to wake at the smallest of sounds. And now he could hear everything.

"- may have been sweet on her, but he ain't yours, and he can't stay. We can't afford a child getting under foot," Madame Auburnbrie lectured coldly, "Lilium's sister – "

"Hated her, and would have no problem taking that hatred out on her son," Dave cut in, his voice low and mean in a way that Lumen had never heard. "I promised her I would see him taken care of if ever the worst happened, an' that's what I intend t'do," the hunter declared firmly.

"He would be better cared for in Insomnia's Crown City with his Aunt. They'd let him in with a blood relative, and he's young enough that if she refuses he'll still be taken as a refugee. Don't be stupid, boy."

"I _promised_. An' that's the end of it. If he's gunna be underfoot here, then we'll just leave." A chair scraped against the wooden floor.

"You would take him on the road? After what just happened? He'd a bad luck charm, that boy."

He heard Dave 'tsk' angrily, and then a door slam, heavy boot steps approaching his recovery room. Lumen debated pretending to be asleep, Harry told him to do so, because adults hated it when you listened in on their conversations, Lumen didn't like lying and knew Dave would never hurt him. He didn't get a chance to make his mind up before the door was opening, and the Hunter was stepping in with a face like thunder. One that paused and then dropped as soon as he realised that he was awake. Dave scratched the back of his head awkwardly, and gently closed the door behind him.

"Guess I don't have'ta ask whether or not y'all heard that, huh?" he questioned softly even as he rounded the bed to slump into the arm chair. Lumen shook his head, picking at the bedding with what little of his fingertips that weren't bandaged. Dave sighed again, "I know I said a lotta things in there, but what do _you_ wanna do, Lumen? It _is_ your life we're discussin' here. I say y'all should get a word in what happens."

Trap, he's lying, Harry whispered in his head, suspicion turning his stomach because this was just to see how opposed he was to going to the Crown City, to see if he needed more _stringent_ methods of making sure he stayed there once they got rid of him.

He just wants to give us a choice, Lumen knew. Dave was a good guy, he always treated Lumen well, loved him even, as a father could have done. In all honesty, he really _did_ see the Hunter as the closest thing to a father that he had. He knew that the man loved his mother, loved her dearly, but she was just too... she couldn't bare the idea of being tied down, and while Dave was one of her dearest friends, she didn't like indecisive wishywashy men who meekly did as they were told all the time. She did not like how the man's mother still had his balls in a vice (her words, not his).

That Dave was arguing against his mother for Lumen was _huge_. And if she had been alive, he knew his mother would have kissed the man silly for it.

"I'd like to stay with you," he said quietly, "I don't know Insomnia. Or Auntie. Mum never had anything nice to say about her. I don't think she'd like me either." He shrugged a shoulder, "She probably wouldn't accept me. I'm too..." he trailed off, trying to find the words to describe what his Aunt would find so objectionable given what he knew about her. She had been a fairly normal young woman with a head full of practicality and romance and ambition. She wanted to marry well, to be comfortable, so her children would be safe, but she wanted to be safe, wanted to be _well taken care of_. She wanted status. A woman obsessed with appearances, cleanliness, orderliness. For her, Lumen would be a blight. A child so entirely wild that just having him within her house would somehow make it dirty, lesser, than what it had been. He would be a cancerous growth in her opinion. One she would never tolerate in her perfect life. (Idly he wondered how much of that information was from his mother's retellings, or from Harry's own opinion of his Aunt, it was getting harder to tell, the lines were blurring in places.)

Dave breathed out slowly, and nodded, "If that's what you want, Firefly, then that's that. I'd like for you to stay with me, and since you're amenable to it, and it's what your Mom wanted, that's the way it's gonna be."

"What about your Mum?" the eight year old asked warily.

Dave glanced to the door, neither of them had heard the front door open or close, so she was still here. Whether she was brooding, or listening in was anyone's guess but either way the Hunter looked back at him with heavy brown eyes.

"Family's more than just blood."

 _ **0000**_

 **I love Dave, but damn he seems so sad all the time. He needs more love, and a spine.**

 **So, what d'y'all think of this?**


	2. Chapter 2

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Two**

He thought it would all be different, now that Mum was gone.

He thought that everything would be wrong, the days darker, the skies storming to match the pain in his chest. That food would turn to ash in his mouth. That his whole life would change.

But nothing really changed. Not really.

She just wasn't there anymore.

And he wasn't sure how to handle that.

He joined Dave on the back of his motorbike, their stuff in the side cart, as they went from Outpost to Outpost, coordinating other Hunters, checking in with Tipsters about missing Hunters or missions that need appropriate ranking before getting posted. He would stay at the eateries while Dave went out on work, either looking for fallen tags, or slaying beasts that were too strong for any of the local hunters assigned to the territory. It would be Lumen's job to keep hold of the tags until they could return them to the hunter's family, he kept them in a small wooden box in his backpack that he used to keep cool rocks, feathers, and other bits and pieces in before. He wore his mother's tags instead of storing them.

On nice days, sometimes Dave would still take him fishing, introduced him to an old friend of his mother's called Navyth, and they'd cook up what they caught over the campfire that night. And for a time, Lumen could pretend they were just waiting for Mum to get back from a hunt. But when night fell and she didn't return, he always felt sick to his stomach as he crawled into his bedroll. He tried to keep up with his schooling, but Dave was more absent than his Mum and maths was boring, so it was with some guilt he allowed his school-work to slide. It was the source of the first disagreement he faced from Dave who didn't want him to flunk, or give anything less than his best.

He wasn't _great_ at Academics, there was always something more interesting to do, even if it was turning the diner napkins into origami fish and ducks. He took to doodling, drawing and art, eventually graduating into writing short stories that he then did pictures with, sometimes comics. But he couldn't keep them when he was finished with them, there was very little space for such things in their packs, so inevitably he either binned them, or gave the nicer ones to the tipsters as thanks for keeping an eye on him (Old Lestallum's Kenny Crow Diner had started an art-wall when he did so, and now children and adults and passers-through had added to it over the years, the wall became something of a tourist attraction in itself).

He picked up how to cook while at the diners, trying to fill his time by learning something that was at least applicable in everyday life that would be more interesting than poetry. And when that failed to hold his attention, he started sneaking out and killing the small local monsters to sharpen his combat skills – Dave grounded him for it, and then taught him how to whittle.

Again, it was nice, something to occupy his hands, but he couldn't keep anything that he made, and some of the more delicate things he began to make as he got more ambitious with his work wouldn't survive the travelling that they did. So, eventually, that too fell by the wayside. He would occasionally pick up a chunk of nice wood and spend a day solid shaping and working it if Dave told him that he would be out for most of it on a job, or if they were going to be stuck at an Outpost for a while. But he didn't bother much otherwise.

He took up music for a while. Whittled himself a wooden flute, and used an old mayonnaise tub as a drum, but if he was going to be making a racket then he wasn't allowed into the diner, and after a while he noticed that if he used his flute too much he sometimes summoned monsters if he was too far away from any of the outposts. He might have taken advantage of that in order to get some fighting in.

He didn't get Dave's over-protectiveness. Okay. No, that was a lie. He _did_. But he was ten already. He might not be able to go toe to toe against daemons, but sabertusks were literally the bottom of the foodchain in the bestiary, he didn't tangle with them often, usually it was just reapertails and he could _literally_ dance _ontop_ of them. They were harmless. The Harry-Voice in his head equated tangling with them as animal abuse and didn't particularly enjoy it, even though Lumen knew they were a menace and vermin in the Leide area (he wasn't stupid enough to pull this kind of behaviour off in either Duscae or Cleigne, Leide's proximity to Insomnia meant that the majority of the creatures were weak, with only a handful of _Alpha_ beasts that ruled the lands and avoided humanity).

Then Dave took him up to Hammerhead.

It was... an experience.

The owner was a crotchety old man who had at least twenty years on Dave, and a granddaughter who was a good eight years older than Lumen. Cid Sophiar hadn't even bothered to get out of his deck chair when they pulled in on the back of Dave's bike, his granddaughter bouncing out from the workshop to see the rare motorbike that many people scorned for the far safer car. Cindy was a pretty eighteen year old woman with a head of blonde curls, and a figure that made many a man give her more than second and third looks. Thankfully, Dave only cast her the one amused glance before he was swinging off to go and greet old man Cid.

Cid who sat up the second he caught sight of Lumen perched on the back of the battered old bike, and _swore_.

Everyone paused, and looked over at him as the old man pushed himself to his feet. "Imma kill 'im," the man snarled to himself, "Stupid, idiot, skirt-chasing son of a coeurl shite!"

"Pawpaw!" the young woman, Cindy, chided in astonishment, her hands immediately moving to cover Lumen's ears. "Nawt in front'a lil' ears!" she exclaimed.

"Six damn it, iffin 'e's really Lil's boy then he'll have heard a lot worse from the cradle than what I can come up with," the grizzled old mechanic swore finally looking at Dave who had a strange look on his face as he looked between the old man and his young charge.

"You know his father," the hunter said, practically sucking all the air out of Lumen's chest as his eyes went wide, and Cid's own narrowed.

"Lil weren't too forth comin' on the who then, huh?" he demanded roughly, glancing between them before whisking his cap off to drag a hand through his hair. "Yeah. I know 'im. Dumb bastard. But if she didn't want no one knowin', then who am I to go against her wishes now that she's not here anymore?" he demanded when Dave's mouth opened, throwing the man a narrow look.

Part of him wanted to know. Harry wanted to know. He'd never had a father, never had _parents_ , and for the last two years of his life everyone would tell him how amazing they both were. But here, now, Lumen had known his mother, and she'd had nothing but bad things to say about his spineless coward of a father. A soft ignorant man who had no _concept_ of the world at large, and probably would have died had his friends not been there to drag his ass out of the stupidity he had a bad habit of walking into, naïve or uncaring as to the danger.

"Is he dangerous?" he found himself asking instead.

"What was that? Cindy, girl, let go of his head, it's clear yer hands ain't doin' nothin'," the old man scolded, his granddaughter huffing, releasing the ten year old as she stepped to one side.

Lumen swallowed, "Is he dangerous?" he repeated, watching the man blink in confusion and surprise, "Mum never had anything good to say. She said she'd tell me when I was older, when it was 'safe' for me to know. Is he dangerous, because you talk like he's still alive, so, if he knows I exist, will he hurt me, or Dave?" he demanded. Regardless of whatever bad blood that might have been between his biological parents, his mother wasn't totally a heartless bitch; callous, cold, and ruthlessly practical, yes. But cruel for the sake of being cruel wasn't something she tolerated in anyone, let alone herself. She would have told his father about him at the very least. Unless it would have been dangerous for either of them to be known by him. She was ferocious about her independence, about her freedom, _and_ about his wellbeing above all else. She wanted him to live, that was why most of his early life lessons had been about survival, about people, about living, and living well with both himself, and others.

Cid hrmphed tiredly, and folded his arms, "...Yeah. But probably not in the way yer thinkin', kiddo. Cindy, mind the shop. Might as well open up that old bottle'a brandy, I have a feelin' that Hunter Dave'll need it at the very least."

 _ **000**_

Whether Cid told Dave who his father really was, Lumen couldn't begin to guess at. They talked about the mysterious man his mother had been with, Cid even handed over a few of her old belongings that he'd kept hold of in case she ever came this way again. One of which was a black uniform with a dark grey symbol, almost indistinguishable against the dark colour, but a familiar symbol all the same. Crownsguard. The royal military of Insomnia. His mother... had been a Crownsguard?

No. The uniform was given to her by his father, tailored to fit her with an unskilled but not clumsy hand. The only damage to the uniform was the tear on the shoulder, where Cid told him she tore her royal sigil off and threw it away the night she brought Cindy to Hammerhead.

His mother had been responsible for saving the eighteen year old woman when she was a child, beset by daemons, as she and hundreds of others fled the destruction of Keycatrich Town the night the Wall fell.

Cindy seemed to think that meant she was responsible for him while he was staying at Hammerhead with them, Dave having to head to some of the near-by daemons dens in order to deal with missing tags and hunts no one else could handle. He wasn't sure what interest an eighteen year old woman could have in a ten year old brat, but he wasn't complaining, she showed him a whole bunch of cool machines and taught him how to use them, and even fix them. With a repair kit, he was pretty certain he could fix any stranded car he and Dave might find on the road in future.

Old man Cid on the otherhand, didn't seem to like him over much. At least at first. He was watching, always watching, judging. Likely as not looking for similarities between him and his coward of a father. Part of Lumen wanted to shrink back, but Harry wouldn't let him. He had spent ten years being judged and deemed wanting on the memory of both his parents, he refused to let this man, whose opinion mattered even LESS than anyone else's he had ever known, make him _ashamed_ to exist.

Sometimes Lumen thought Harry was more his mother's son than he was.

Cindy couldn't spend all of her time with him though, and when a customer with a particularly tricky engine problem came in, she left him to his own devices to actually do her job. Which lead him to once again whittling. In the bright light of Hammerhead, the distant sound of the radio playing something bright and jazzy, the faint breeze taking the sting out of the heat, he got completely absorbed in his work.

It was his best yet, he realised sadly once he had finished, carefully using a wet fingertip to dig out a little splinter of wood from under the feathers he had oh so carefully shaved out of the griffon figurine.

He stared down at it, and sighed heavily.

It would get _ruined_ in his backpack, no matter how carefully he padded it with his ratty t-shirts and underpants.

Maybe Cindy would like it? He wondered dully as he set his knife down and drew his knees up against his chest and buried his face in them, hating Harry just a little bit all the while. Before he came along, Lumen had been content, his life on the road was the only one he knew, he had no hobbies outside his school work and collecting little rocks and animal bones in his wooden box, fishing with Dave, and wildlife watching with Mum. Until Harry came along, yeah he got bored, but it was never so noticeable, or all-consuming. The desire to keep hold of all those little things he wasn't allowed to keep hadn't been so all consuming. The idea of willingly parting with something he created was sour, and dismal. Harry was so used to things just being _taken_ from him, to having nothing because of other people, that as Lumen the fact that he could have these things but then had to give them up because there was just no _space_ made his mouth go all sour and vinegary.

"Y'know. You can always jes'... slide it inta elsewhere," the old man's voice said behind him.

Lumen jolted, jerking his head up and twisting in place to see the old man kneeling down just a little bit behind him, his face uncommonly soft, and a little sad. It was the first time he'd seen a look on his face that wasn't suspicion. He held a hand out, looking pointedly at the figurine in his hands, and, with great reluctance, Lumen slowly handed it over to him.

Cid turned it over in his hands, work roughened fingers shockingly gentle as they handled the delicate wooden feathers. "It's good work. Ye've got an eye fer detail, an' steady hands. It'd be a shame t'leave this behind," he admitted with an almost sly side-glance before...

Lumen's mouth dropped open as the figurine burst into light, crystalline petals shattering in the air like water droplets in the dawn light.

And then it appeared again, white lines sketching into the air in Cid's other hand as with a sound like breaking crystal it reappeared. Whole, unharmed, not even a feather out of place. Carefully, he returned it to the ten year old's stunned grasp, smirking a little at the naked astonishment and awe on his young face.

The old mechanic tapped his nose, "Between you an' me, it's our lil' secret. Get me?"

Green-green eyes, Lilium's green eyes, were wide as the boy nodded his head rapidly, his long powder-fine dark hair, his Daddy's hair, flying around his face as he did so.

"Now here's how t'do it." And with that, Cid taught the young boy how to put away his toys, and earned himself a little fan along the way.

It was cute the way that, after he took the time to actually try with the kid, the boy followed him around the workshop, learning everything he could about anything Cid thought to teach him. Cindy thought it absolutely _precious_ , and took a ton of photographs with her ancient polaroid camera, even asking everyone to pose for her to take the snaps. Pictures of Lumen showing an interested Takka how to make Kenny's Salmon, a dish from the original Kenny Crow Diner up in Old Lestallum, one of him peering over the edge of a workbench that Cid was at upgrading a hunter's sword, one of Cindy planting a big juicy kiss on his cheek while he howled blue murder and tried to wriggle away (that one may have gone into Cid's wallet as no one ever saw it again), the look on Lumen's face when Cid presented him with his own short-sword that they'd upgraded themselves, there were stars in his eyes.

And then Dave came back. And it was time to move on.

Cindy hugged him extra tight, kissing both his cheeks and forehead, shoving her phone number into his pocket and telling him to give her a call, or write a letter, or something so she'd know he was alright. She decided she quite liked having a little brother, especially one that was as cute as a button like him. So he'd better stay in touch, or she'd come lookin' for him!

Cid tapped his nose with a twisted grin, and Lumen grinned right back and returned the gesture. The two of them saying nothing about the little ability they shared, the one that let them hide things, the same ability his mother told him to hide as a child, to never let anyone see or know, or they'd take him away. That even Cid told him that it was their secret meant that he was hiding it too. It must have been magic, like Harry thought, hidden from people for good reason. But whether it was the Law, or because of the War, he couldn't know. And didn't want to risk it.

So he kept quiet, and didn't even tell Dave.

He kept practising with his special ability, Cid told him he needed to just in case, the world wasn't a nice place and it was always good to have an ace in the hole. Especially one like _that_. So while Dave was out, he snuck away from the diners and into the wastes where he summoned his swords and he used his flute to call minor beasts, and then he _fought_. And he figured out how to teleport.

It drained his magic so bad that after the first time he nearly passed out, but he figured out that the more he did it, the better he got at it. He always slept well after a day of practice. Often burrowing against Dave in their tent because he felt cold, and a little shaky if he used too much power, and the hunter was a living furnace who didn't mind being a human teddybear over-much. He still needed to throw something in order to _do_ his teleporting, because apparently he needed some kind of focus, but he was working on trying to do it without that. For now, he was able to throw a handful of pebbles and teleport to each one before they hit the ground – his record was five stones before they all hit the ground, followed by his dizzy ass as he tried not to vomit from multiple split-second jumps without a wind-up.

He kept whittling, and added lacquers and paints to his collection, adding painted details and varnishes to the wood to really bring out the colour of the materials. Some of them were so beautiful that he felt pleased enough to even try _selling_ them.

For his thirteenth birthday, Dave took him to Wiz's Chocobo Ranch.

Lumen had only ever seen wild chocobos at a distance, and the occasional rented bird outside a diner. The riders were generally okay with a random kid coming over to pet their animal, and the chocobos themselves enchanted both Lumen _and_ Harry who likened them to a much prettier cousin of an ostrich. How Dave had known about his (minor) obsession was anyone's guess, but he was grateful none the less as Wiz gave him a tour of the whole place and introduced him to one of the friendlier hens, a former racing bird who was particularly good with children.

"Want to try riding her?" Wiz's daughter Camilla asked, smiling at him from under her cap.

"Can I?" he asked excitedly.

She laughed, "Sure can. Concita's all saddled up and ready to go, and she likes you well enough too," she added as the yellow chocobo crooned and snapped her beak in his hair, nudging his head as she ruffled her feathers pointedly in demand for pets and attention.

Camilla took the hen by her reigns and lead them across the road to the running circuit, and showed him how to saddle up. Perched carefully in the saddle, she lead them around the shortest part of the track, giving instructions on how to urge a chocobo to run, how to slow them, how to steer with his legs, with the reigns, how to sit in the saddle, position his feet so they wouldn't slip through and hurt his ankles if he ever fell out of the saddle. She ran while leading the bird, slowing to a walk, and then running again so he could get a handle on the motions.

And then she let go.

Concita chirped enquiringly when he froze a little, but he was thirteen, and she'd told him what to do. He could handle this.

He leaned forward, squeezed his legs into the chocobo's side, and nudged her with a heel.

The hen _warked_ gleefully, and launched herself forward so fast he nearly fell off with a yelp, grabbing hold of the saddle in both hands in alarm as she full on _sprinted_ down the track.

Distantly he could hear Camilla laughing herself sick, trying to shout at him to – do something, he couldn't hear her, he was too far away, and she was laughing too much.

Concita warked gleefully as she pelted down the track, taking a corner hard enough that he felt his butt leave the saddle, and come down hard enough that he saw stars and teared up a little as he sat on himself. He sank down in the saddle, squeezing his eyes shut as he hunched over himself and carefully released a hand to adjust himself. Concita warked happily as she, by the Six, actually sped up some more.

Lumen opened his eyes, they were pelting down one of the longer tracks, the only sound around them being the distant birds and sounds of the Catoblepas at the heart of the valley in the North. Concita's legs hitting the leaf-littered ground.

It was... nice.

He shifted his weight, tucking his legs up more comfortably against her sides as his previous position put them far too close to her rapidly moving legs for his comfort. He didn't want to get kicked, or trip her as they ran.

Now that he had gotten into the rhythm, it was _awesome_. The chocobo was much quieter than Dave's motorbike, and yes she might have been slower but there was just something... nicer about it. The wind in his hair, a living breathing creature with him. It felt more _comfortable_ to him, more familiar.

"Let's see how fast you _really_ are," the thirteen year old challenged, and then hunched down in the saddle, leaning forward and giving her more of the reins, jockey position Harry's voice whispered in his head, faded memories of passing TVs at the Ladbrokes gambling shops on the highstreet and seeing the jockeys on their horses at the races.

Concita practically shrieked as she bolted forward, heavy claws tearing the ground beneath them as she bent almost double, wings spreading on either side of him for balance as he felt the muscles in her back shift beneath him, and the swell of her lungs between his knees.

He took back the comment about being slower, chocobos could apparently hit speeds equal to cars when _sprinting!_

He laughed gleefully as he urged her on, leaning into the run.

 _ **000**_

This was the best birthday ever, something he wasn't shy about telling Dave when he got back from his afternoon at the track, and helping Camilla untack and groom the sweaty but pleased with herself Concita.

"Old girl rarely gets a run like that!" the young woman exclaimed happily, "You really made her day, Lumen, thank you," she said, showing him how to straighten her feathers from where they'd gotten a little squwify under the saddle and bridle.

"It was a lot of fun!" the thirteen year old grinned as he shook his head, the chocobo squawking as her grooming efforts were ruined.

It was after he'd fed the former racer that he saw Dave on his radio, looking angry and worried, and felt something sink in his stomach, _hard_. Oh no.

He dropped the empty bucket of greens, and ran over.

"- get a fake hunter I.D. anyhow?!" Dave was snarling into his walkie furiously, trying to keep his voice down, and half-turned away as he glared into the distance.

" _Don't rightly know, boss,_ " That was Vega from the Leide outpost just north of... of Saltash, or what _used_ to be Saltash. " _But the mark is a night based one. They're probably already on site. I've dispatched Junon and Dalmasca, but who knows if they'll get there in time._ "

Dave cursed, and Lumen felt his stomach twist. The only reason Dave had decided to give them this break from his hunting duties to celebrate his birthday was because of his injuries, the last hunt he went on had been more trouble than previously anticipated, and he'd messed his back up something fierce. Enough so that even with two elixer treatments it was still giving him trouble.

"Give me the area, I'll see what I can do," the hunter demanded.

" _Dave, you're still injured, that such a good idea? I don't want to have to dispatch to look for_ your _tags as well. Bad enough Lumen's walkin' around with his ma's around his neck, it'd break his heart to add yours to them,_ " Vega warned him.

"I can... I can look fer whatever remains tomorrow," the hunter explained with such a slump to his shoulders that Lumen immediately felt sick and sad and cold and angry all at once.

He listened to the radio operator rattle off the coordinates for the hunt location and frowned. That... wasn't too far away actually. Half a day on foot. But by motorbike, it would only be three hours on the road.

By chocobo though... Cross-country...

Lumen stared at the defeated slant of Dave's shoulders, and knew immediately his guardian was already replanning their route in order to swing by the hunt site, and then the hunter's family – if they could find any identification that was legitimate on their remains. He had already decided that this person was dead. The thirteen year old could read it in every line of his broad shoulders and back.

He looked over his shoulder to where Concita peered over at him with intelligent black eyes.

He looked back at Dave, and nodded to himself.

No tag hunting this time. No dead bodies and crying parents or wives or children.

He whirled in place and ran back to Concita, "Good for another run, girl?" he asked the bird whose crown immediately flicked up with excitement at the word 'run'. She kweh'd, bouncing from foot to foot as he snatched up her bridal and carefully worked it into her beak, he glanced over to Dave and shook his head, no time for the saddle, he needed to go before anyone realised what he was up to.

He opened the gate and vaulted onto the racer's back.

"Go! Go! Go!" he commanded, legs drawn up, and bending down.

She squawked and ran, bolting out of her pen and straight past Wiz who yelped and dropped a basket of greens.

"LUMEN!" he heard Dave bellow somewhere behind him as the chocobo leapt lightly over the fencing and took off down the road, cutting around a banged up blue car as it turned in towards the outpost for the night – the sun already staining the sky a vivid scarlet and amber as night began to fall.

His mouth filled with something vinegary and metallic as he contemplated what he was about to actually do. Go running through the dark in an unfamiliar part of the country in order to find a fake hunter before they got themselves killed on a job. His hands felt slick and clammy with sweat at the thought of what monsters he may run into in the dark, of daemons that may come roaring from the shadows.

He would just have to handle it when it happened. Like he always did.

Best thing about taking so long to actually reach his destination was that he couldn't remain terrified the whole way there, yes his hands were sweaty, and his stomach churned, but the longer he went without seeing anything, or hearing that familiar gut ripping shriek of twisting groaning metal in the dark, the harder it was to remain in a constant state of freaking out. It was a bit awkward to hold his phone up and use the flash-light to see his way forward, but it was enough so that Concita didn't end up twisting an ankle in the dark, or running directly into a tree or a wall.

"I-is someone there?! Help! Help me!" a male voice wavered on the wind.

Concita warked and the two of them slowed to a walk, "Hey! Sound off if you're hurtin'!" Lumen called back, turning his phone in his hand to find the voice.

"O-over here!" he called, to the left.

Slowly, because it was dark, he and Concita padded through the undergrowth until they came to a fallen tree, and the young man huddled behind it. His clothing dark with blood. He looked up in a mixture of hope and alarm when he realised just who had found him in the dark.

"Y-you're just a kid," he gasped.

"I'm thirteen, thank you. And apparently smarter'n you if yer out here huntin' with a _fake_ I.D." the former Gryffindor snipped tetchily at him as he swung off Concita's back and reached for his potion supplies.

"N-no, you gotta get outta here, kid. There's daemons. It was a daemon hunt!"

"Then stop makin' so much noise," Lumen hissed and shattered the potion into the teenager's stomach. All at once his breathing came a little easier, and he stopped wavering where he was sat. "Now c'mon. I'm small enough that Concita can take two. Let's go," he hissed, glancing over his shoulder as the forest suddenly went... concerningly quiet.

Concita's crown flattened anxiously against her skull as her whole body practically lost a hundred pounds, all of her feathers lying flat and sleek in fear.

That was _not_ a good sign.

"Now!" Lumen hissed, grabbing the boy by his arm and hauling him to his feet and to the chocobo, slapping at him to go faster as the trees in the distance moved against the off-colour sky, and the sound of metal scraping against wood could be heard in the distance.

Oh gods.

That was an Iron Giant.

Lumen would _never_ forget the sound of them.

Ever.

It felt like his heart was lodged somewhere in his throat as he saw the moonlight glint off the metal almost wetly in the darkness. It grumbled and Concita warked in fear, jarring him out of his frozen stare.

He gasped, lungs unsticking and filling almost hard enough to make him choke. He scrambled atop Concita who chirped anxiously, shifting under him until he was seated, perched in the other teenager's lap who wrapped arms around in terror, shaking like a leaf, getting cold and sticky blood against his back.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go," the other teen moaned, eyes locked on the distant figure still laboriously making its way through the trees.

"YAH!" Lumen didn't need telling twice. As soon as he was seated and had her reins in hand, he dug his heels into the hen's sides and they were _off_.

Immediately the air tore with the sound of twisting metal, like rusted gate hinges moving for the first time in decades.

He felt sick, flashes of scarlet filling his eyes as he ducked his head and clung to Concita's back for dear life. His mother's face swimming in front of him, her voice filling his ears.

' _LUMEN!_ '

"THE HAVEN'S THATTA WAY!" the teenager screeched almost hysterically in his ear, arms tightening around his waist hard enough that it nearly crushed him.

"I CAN SEE THAT! STOP CRUSHING ME!" he snarled back, silently relieved as he was jarred out of the flashback. The other teenager did not loosen his grip, if anything he gripped tighter when they heard another twisting shriek of metal on their other side, accompanied by the wet _splash_ of foul black icor as more daemons appeared. He started screaming the second a bomb burst into life through the trees, ghostly white and blue in appearance, and providing just enough illumination for them to see the three flan that formed along with it, and the gleaming wet metal of another Iron Giant.

"STOP SCREAMING!" Lumen howled, elbowing him harshly as the two bolted through the undergrowth on Concita to the distant blue ribbon of glowing smoke above the treeline. But either the teenager was too panicked to listen or just didn't _hear_ him, he didn't stop screaming until the chocobo leapt up onto the glowing rock and skidded to a stop with a chitter of relief and distress as she shook herself.

Lumen shoved him off the back of the bird, only to end up being dragged off with him when the bastard refused to let go.

"Ugh! Let me _go!_ " he commanded, slapping a hand onto the teenager's face and physically shoving him away. "I said _leggo!_ " he snarled, pulling back and full on _punching_ the stupid ass teenager in the face.

He howled and jerked his arms up to shield his face, letting Lumen roll off of him and away.

"Whaddya hit me like _that_ for?!" the teenager, who looked to be about maybe eighteen, possibly older in the light of the haven, practically howled.

"Whaddaya _think_?" Lumen demanded, cruelly mimicking his thick Galdin accent. "What kinda idiot uses a fake hunter I.D. to sign up for hunts he isn't ready for? In the middle of the night? With no car, bike, or bird to get back, and no back up either! Did you even bring weapons? Or how about restoratives?!" he demanded with increasing nastiness.

The pale haired boy shrank in on himself with almost every word, fiddling with his fancy mint-green scarf.

Lumen made a noise of disgust, and froze as he heard the sound of the Giants somewhere in the distant darkness grumbling angrily. He swallowed as he reached for Concita's reins and pulled her a little further away from the edge of the haven. He'd seen his mother stand at the edge of a haven and goad one of them into using some kind of gravity magic to yank her off the edge, at the time she'd played it as a great game, told him to watch this and turned on her lights before doing it so he could see how the idiot daemon summoned her straight to it. Talk about inviting death in with a smile. She'd been swinging her axe before the creature even realised that it hadn't succeeded in attacking her, but in bringing her to attack it. Now though, now that he was older, and only had that one blade that Cid taught him how to make, and a couple of figurines tucked up and hidden in his secret magic pockets, that he couldn't bring out with that teenager hanging around, he didn't want either of them close to the edges of the haven.

"Don't get close to the edges," he told the boy shortly, even as he pretended to rummage in his pockets while using Concita's bulk to hide the way he summoned his fire-starting kit to hand.

"Wh-why?" the teenager asked, hastily obeying and shuffling closer to the thirteen year old as he tried to get the campfire started.

"Iron Giants have a gravity magic, they can yank you clean off a haven if you stand too close to the edge. Mum used to think it was funny to let them summon her just so she could bury her axe in them before they realised," he explained dully, he supposed it was funny, but looking back he also couldn't help but think it was mighty reckless of her too. What if something had gone wrong? He was so young back then, if she'd gotten hurt, he would he tried to go to her, no matter how scared he was.

In the light of the campfire, the teenager looked ghastly. Covered in blood and bruises. He had probably lost his weapon somewhere in the wilderness, and was now looking at Lumen in something rather a lot like awe.

"Yer, like, twelve!" he spluttered, "I knew you was young but, Astrals, what are ya _doin'_ out here so late?!" he spluttered.

He gave the teenager a scathing look, "Saving your ass. My guardian got a radio call from one of the hunter outposts telling us about your idiocy. They dispatched a few hunters to come find you, but didn't have much hope. They told him so he could find your remains and return anything identifying to your family. Only, I don't like seeing Dave sad. So I grabbed Concita and I rode out to come save you before he needed to come find what _remained_ of you," he explained accusingly.

The teenager frantically rubbed at his head, "Ah, shit, sorry. I'm sorry, I just – I needed the money," he admitted miserably, "I see hunters all the time, I didn't, I mean, they hardly _look_ like much I thought – I thought 'hey, I can do that, get some quick cash'. Didn't realise it was..."

"Dangerous, difficult, lethal?" Lumen listed sarcastically.

"Yeah... Yeah, all o'that."

The thirteen year old made a sound of disgust, shoving his tinderbox back into his pocket and sitting down heavily on the stone in order to drag his phone out. He should call Dave, let him know it was rescue successful.

"Can... I ask yer name? I mean, y'saved my life, I kinda owe ya one," the teenager admitted awkwardly.

"Lumen. Lumen Proelia. Now shut up. I need to call Dave so he doesn't mobilise half of Meldacio to find me."

"Name's Dino, if it means anythin' t'ya. Dino Ghiranze. You ever need anything in future, I'll do my best t'help out."

"Try to live long enough for that offer to be worth anything first," Lumen quipped scathingly as he held the phone to his ear, "Dave? I got 'im. He's safe and we're sat at haven right now."

 _ **0000**_

 **And Chapter finished!**

 **Concita was the real MVP this chapter, but then again, all chocobos are MVPs in my opinion. Best birbs.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Three**

Sleeping out at a haven was nothing new, Lumen honestly spent more time sleeping on them than he did actual beds to be perfectly honest. Havens were free, hotels weren't. But regardless, it was still somewhat difficult to drop off to sleep with an Iron Giant, the source of almost all of his nightmares over the last five years, grumbling not too far off, the thick smell of chocobo and gyashl greens in his nose, and the Irritance jumping at almost every single sound around them. All of this combined did not make for an easy night.

He felt he could be justified for shoving Dino off the haven when he woke up to find the teenager practically suction-cupped to his side.

The Irritance should be thankful he felt charitable enough to even _feed_ him that morning, scavenging through the undergrowth nearby to find wild onions. Little bit of oil on a rock in the fire and they had some fried onion for breakfast, not as nice as what he could usually cook up, but he wasn't about to rummage in his magic pockets around this guy. Shame that there wasn't any leiden pepper around here though.

"What were you even _doing_?" he finally asked once he had eaten, and no longer desperately wanted to introduce the grey haired youth to the lightning deposit down the hill.

Dino shrugged a shoulder, "Needed the money. See. There's a _lot_ of us. Ma works hard, but with six of us, it's a lot of mouths to feed. My older brother's a hunter, he always told her it was easy money. I guess... he was lying so she wouldn't worry. See, I wanna be a jeweller, makin' something like the Crystal of Lucis? The thing that powers Insomnia's Wall? _THAT_ is my goal. I mean, I doubt I'll get that far before I'm old and grey and crooked, but I want to start _now_. But material's expensive. Even the cheapest semi-precious stones that come in off the trade ships at the Quay price it way over what I could get. So I thought, I'll earn the money to buy it myself, and then when I make my stuff, I'll be able to support Ma. She wants me to take this publishing job I got offered, I mean, I can write an' all. I'm pretty good at it even, but, it just doesn't _thrill_ me, y'know?"

Lumen wrinkled his nose thoughtfully, he _supposed_ it was a good cause. Certainly not the kind of thing he _personally_ would have done, but hey, he couldn't really blame someone for having a goal and taking a stupid risk to try and reach for it.

"Quay? That mean you're from Leide way?" he asked curiously, scooping up a few more slices of hot onion with quick fingertips. With the Galdin accent it was kind of obvious, but people moved around a lot depending on the area, and Leide had a lot of difficulties with power being so far away from Lestallum's EXINERIS plant. Hell. Saltash... had been on the Leide power lines. When the generator went they couldn't rely on the mains because it had gone down in their area _decades_ ago.

"Galdin way, yah. Just south-west of the Vannath Coast," he admitted miserably, "Ma's gunna kill me. Daguerro'll do worse when he finds out how close I got to Costlemark Tower."

Lumen didn't comment, only shovelled more onion into his mouth. It was Dino's own stupid ass fault.

 _ **000**_

The two of them left Turncouth Haven in the bright light of morning once Concita was fed and watered on a couple of local chocobo greens. The trip back to Wiz's was done at an easy run instead of a frantic sprint, it was actually quite pleasant without the eighteen year old trying to break his ribs as the two of them ran along-side the main road so as not to get lost.

They got to Wiz's outpost just before lunch, and the first thing Lumen saw when they came down the slip road onto the property was Dave. Looking like he hadn't slept an inch, and _livid_.

"Uh oh," the thirteen year old murmured as he pulled Concita to a stop, the chocobo cheerfully kweh'ing as she did so, even setting herself down so the little humans could climb off more easily. Dino staggered off the bird with a groan, and was _completely_ unprepared for Dave to suddenly punch him.

"Ah! What?!" the teenager howled, staggering backwards, hand cupping his bloody mouth.

Concita warked and jumped to her feet before Lumen could get off, skittering several paces away from the hunter who grabbed Dino by the front of his clothes and _shook_ him, "Do y'all have any _idea_ how much trouble yer in, boy?" he snarled.

Dave was _not_ a small man. Dino might have been tall, but Dave had twice the mass of the eighteen year old, all of it in muscle. His dark-tanned skin covered in scars and tattoos, clad in dusty travel stained leather, and practical work-worn denim. Compared to the eighteen year old, they couldn't have been more different than night and day, Dino was skinny and still awkward in his skin, pale as a worm, and dressed in a frivolous mint-green silk scarf, a shiny leather jacket that had probably never seen anything more strenuous than a rain-shower, and a pair of battered second hand trainers.

"I had written you off," Dave continued ruthlessly, "Already planned to swing by and see what little of you I could scrape up to send back home. Two good hunters nearly got themselves killed by daemons looking for your dumbass self in the dark. And then what happens, but my own damn _kid_ goes haring off into the night lookin' fer y'all!"

"I-I'm sorry, sir! I'm sorry! I didn't mean t'cause so much trouble!" Dino babbled in terror, blood spilling down his chin from his busted lips and bloody mouth.

"BUT YA DID! Y'all better _shower_ the Six in gratitude, 'cause if anythin' had happened to those people because'a _your_ stupidity, I'd be _carvin'_ it outta yer ass," the hunter growled darkly, leaving absolutely no doubt in the teenager's mind about his sincerity.

Lumen swallowed dryly, intimidated for the first time in his life of Dave's temper. He'd never _seen_ the hunter so furious, or violent before. Did – had his mother seen him like this? She hated weak men, he couldn't help but think she might not have had so many objections to him if she'd seen this side of him.

The hunter dropped the eighteen year old and pointed jerkily at the caravan, "Git. Clean yerself up. I'll be takin' y'all back home."

"Y-yessir," Dino agreed swiftly, and scurried away, making sure to keep out of arms reach.

Then he turned to where Lumen was perched on Concita, the chocobo puffed up defensively, her crest bristling, trying to make herself look bigger.

"Lumen."

He flinched, "Yes sir," he found himself whispering at the harsh note in his guardian's voice, and quickly dismounted. He hesitated a little, not really wanting to leave Concita's side, but really, the look on the hunter's face was not one that brooked disobedience. He quickly made his way over, stopping in front of him with his head bowed.

He felt Dave's hands on his shoulders, "Are you alright?" he asked roughly.

"Yeah," he nodded, still not looking up, feeling his heart sinking down to his toes, "I'm fine. I – I got there in time. I'm sorry I scared you but... I couldn't just..."

He heard the hunter take a deep, shaky breath, and knew he was trying to control his temper and cringed a little more. "Do... y'all understand why I'm angry?" he asked slowly.

Lumen nodded a little, "I put myself in danger. An' I put other people in danger lookin' for me. Same as Dino."

"That's right. Y'also scared the daemons outta Wiz stealin' one of his birds like that," he pointed out trying to keep his voice level even as his grip tightened a little and then released, as if it were taking a great deal of effort not to dig his fingers into the thirteen year old's shoulders. He grimaced, he... had quite forgotten about Wiz in his determination to actually get there in time to save Dino. "Yer gunna go and see to that chocobo. Get her bedded down and taken care of. And then you're going to go to Wiz, and yer gunna apologise t'im. And _if_ he accepts, yer gunna ask if there's anything y'all can do to make up fer it. Am I clear?"

"Yes sir," he said quietly.

"Then go."

 _ **000**_

Lumen expected to be read the riot act by the chocobo handler, but despite the scare, the man seemed thrilled to find out that all three of them were back, and in good health. He gave Concita a thorough check over, and aside from a little dehydration and being tired from the two long runs after such a long period of inactivity, she was perfectly fine. He was very happy to know that Dino was rescued and in good health, and waved off Lumen's apology, accepting it immediately and telling him not to worry about it.

"I'm just glad everyone made it back in one piece. Your father was beside himself the whole night, try t'go easy on 'im in future, hm?" the wrangler suggested kindly, patting him on the shoulder and making his way off to a few new visitors who were calling for food.

He did not correct the man about his connection to Dave. It... was more or less true. Like he said the day he took him in, family was more than blood.

He had Dave, and Cid, and Cindy, and all the other hunters.

He had a pretty big family, all things considered.

The rest of the evening was spent in silence as Dave polished his weapons pointedly where Dino could see, and the teenager cringed in his seat, unable to stop his eyes from watching the motions with fascinated awe. Lumen stayed quiet, and did his school-work without fuss or complaint, trying his hardest not to step on Dave's toes when he was so wound up.

The next morning, they ate breakfast, and bade Wiz goodbye, cramming Dino into the sidecar where he was half-buried under their bags, with his legs scrunched up due to the camping gear they'd stuffed in there too. He had a very uncomfortable trip back to Leide, heading south towards the Causcherry Plains and then turning east towards the Fallgrove. They drove in silence, and Lumen shivered as they passed between the ruins of Costlemark Tower and the Royal Lucian Tomb.

It felt like he was being watched.

 _ **000**_

Dino's mother was...

Well, Lumen didn't really have words for her. She reminded him a little bit of a mixture of Harry's Molly Weasley and Lumen's own mother, Lilium. She had Dino by the ear within second of his getting out of the sidecar, reading him the riot act as she alternatively hauled him back to their modest little house, and kindly invited both Lumen and Dave to stay for dinner, it was honestly the least she could do after they bravely rescued her baby from daemons in the night.

Dino never stood a chance. And didn't even try to get a word in edgeways as he was lead around by his tiny mother's iron grip on his ear.

And then his brother appeared as soon as the front door opened.

Dino straight up bounced off the older man's fist.

Lumen winced as a busted nose was added to the split lips Dave gave him.

"I can't BELIEVE you stole my I.D., you goddamn chocobo turd brained moron! I know damn well Ma didn't leave you out for the Mind Flayers, what the hell were you thinking?!" Daguerro Ghiranze yelled. Well. Dino's brother was _definitely_ one of them, Lumen had seen him around a few times up at Meldacio. They played darts that one time, he was fairly sure the older man let him win as well.

 _ **000**_

Mama Ghiranze made one hell of a meal, both Lumen and Dave ended up spending the night with Dino and his family, Daguerro and Dave retreating to drink in peace and destress while Lumen had to deal with Dino and his gaggle of younger siblings, and his mother, who seemed as determined as Mrs Weasley had been to adopt him. His siblings were all little hellions, demanding, noisy, and trying to get their fingers into just about everything – the number of times Lumen had to slap them away from his pockets or his coat or _Astrals forbid_ his mother's tags. They were lucky he didn't dangle them from the light-fixtures on the edge of the town for the daemons to laugh at.

By the end of the evening, Lumen gave up trying to fend the children off and just ran for it. He bolted outside, climbed the nearest tree and refused to come down until after dark when the younger ones who couldn't keep their hands to themselves were sent off to bed. Dave was no help, Dino was grounded and spent his evening doing the dishes and nursing his injuries, and Mama Ghiranze was too busy cooking, and then listening to her eldest and Dave as they chatted to call her hellspawn off.

He was cold and grumpy by the time Daguerro called him down, grinning broadly, beer in hand.

"They're all gone, kiddo," he promised as Lumen slowly let himself down from the tree, crawling down through the branches like a wary coeurl in behemoth territory. He leaned back against the house as he watched the kid slowly lower himself to the ground, arms corded with lean wiry muscle, good honest boots barely making any noise as he landed. He was a cute kid, thirteen, small for his age, thin, but wiry and lean. Unlike his own siblings who were still sweet and soft, a little rolypoly from Ma's good cooking and a kind peaceful life here in Galdin, Dave's boy was as much of a roadie as any other Hunter had to be. All he lacked were tags of his own.

Dag's eyes lingered on the tags around his neck.

Lilium Proelia had been a legend when he joined the hunters. Still an active huntress, she was an utter beast with a penchant for battle-axes that had to weigh about as much as she did, wielding them with a precision that would have made many a swordsman jealous. She had been like a mother coeurl, and trailing at her heels had been the kid. He remembered being quite fond of Lumen when he was a brat, even babysat him a time or two when he was small, reminded vividly of his own siblings when he saw the little boy running barefoot and wild through various Hunter outposts. That impression didn't last long after actually meeting him, he had been a quiet, timid little thing as a child. Big green eyes, a scruffy crows' nest of black hair, and a chubby little face and pot belly. He looked nothing like his mother back then, save for his eyes.

Now, he couldn't say there was much of a difference, but at thirteen his face had shed the puppy fat, he was lean and wiry, those big green eyes that were once shy and timid were now sharp and intent the same way hers had once been. His black hair was long enough to brush his shoulders and strangely powder fine. He must look a lot like his Daddy, the unknown man she vanished with for half a year, only to return spitting mad, pregnant, and even more aggressive than before – at least until the boy was born. He could still see her, it was in his mouth, the shape of his jaw, and his nose. If someone hadn't known Lilium, they wouldn't have pegged him as her child at first glance, even with the two stood side-by-side.

"Wanted to thank you for saving my brother," he said, instead of anything to do with his mother. "Riding out into the dark on chocobo back was ballsy. Bit stupid, but smarter than stealin' a bike," he admitted as the kid grimaced and scratched his head.

"I... I'm sorry," he said slowly, "I didn't save Dino because – I just didn't want Dave to be sad, to find another tag, and have to come here and explain..." he explained, trailing off as he gestured helplessly.

Dag got it, he knew. He'd delivered his own fair share of tags to mourning family members.

He nodded, and set his beer down, "I know. But regardless of the reason, I have my little brother back safe and sound. Well, as sound as the fucking idiot can _be_ ," he growled in annoyance, it prompted a half smile out of the kid so he counted it a win as he bumped a hip into the kid's side, "Thanks to you, I'm not havin' to bury him. You ever need a hand, give me a call. I owe ya."

The teenager nodded uncomfortably, "I'll... keep it in mind."

Daguerro nodded, "See that you do."

 _ **000**_

The two ended up staying the night, Dave had the couch because of his bad back, and Lumen curled up on one of the arm-chairs, legs thrown over one side, sleeping soundly. They woke before the rest of the house, tidied up after themselves, and quietly left the premises as the sun began to rise – Dave wanted to get up to the Prairie Outpost outside the ruins of Keycatrich before sunset and it was _quite_ a long journey.

Lumen kept quiet the whole journey up towards Longwythe Rest Stop where they stopped to get lunch at the diner, and for Dave to talk to the tipster.

It was while they dug into a basket of chips and salmon that Lumen finally spoke up about what was on his mind.

"Can you take me back to Wiz's?" he asked quietly as he stared down at his food.

"Wiz's?" Dave echoed curiously, and warily. Lilium rarely went quiet when she was thinking, but when she finally spoke up, it would take nothing short of rampaging Behemoths to change her mind. Lumen nodded, and then looked him dead in the eye, eyes so much like Lil's it still made something clench in his chest when he remembered he would never see them in her face again. Only here, in the echo of her son.

"I want to help the hunters more," he explained, "We have the tags to identify people, but – I don't _want_ to identify what's left. I – I want to stop us even _needing_ to identify them. If – if I can get to people _before_ they get killed... think of how many lives that could be saved?" he babbled, rushing his words urgently as he leaned forward in his seat. "Cid was telling me about the Insomnian technology they've got at the Crown City, the stuff he's seen is probably a little outdated even out here by now, but Niflheim drops stuff all the time- "

"Hold up, Crown City tech? Lumen, what – "

He shook his head and drummed his hands on the table, "Dave, Dave, please! Listen! Trackers and emergency beacons are _easy_ to access and find! And with the Radio operators we have at almost every outpost, if a hunter armed with both goes out and finds themselves in trouble, they can ping it to the nearest Outpost and they can get an emergency message out. How many hunters manage to escape the immediate area of their hunt, only to die of their injuries later? Injuries that could be healed with just a few potion applications if someone got to them quickly enough! Bikes can't travel across country, and without the headlights that Cindy's always banging on about they're useless at night, but with a chocobo you can go cross country, you can outrun daemons, they can sense monsters – even coeurls when they're stalking, and Wiz told me that some of them are smart enough to be trained in earthquake detection or ingredient hunting. If I could train one in hunting down _people_ then I could get to them before they die in the field!"

Dave set his food down, "You wanna... start some kinda search an' rescue operation?" he summed up.

Lumen nodded, "Yes! Exactly! Only, not just hunters. And not just search and rescue, delivery and courier too. How many outposts need parts they just can't get? If someone had been able to get word to Lestallum when the fire happened at Saltash, a replacement part could have been rushed out to them in time to be installed before nightfall!" he exclaimed, drumming his hands on the table even faster in his excitement.

Dave rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "It's a bold proposal. I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing before," he admitted crunching the numbers in his head.

The numbers of hunters they recruited had been dwindling year by year, and casualties were always high. The problem was, the number of daemons and monsters only seemed to be increasing year after year, and he had some very real concerns that eventually the few hunters that managed to survive wouldn't be enough to protect humanity from the onslaught. And then there were the Menace Dungeons that his mother spoke to him of as a child, those creepy bedtime stories she used to frighten him into obedience, their first real fight and the way she dragged him into Steyliff Grove and _showed_ him the door, and her key, and then demanded to know why she shouldn't shove him in and lock the door behind him.

He shook the unpleasant memories off, and stared at... his son, he supposed. Taking in the young man-still yet a child but growing up all the same. Intelligent and determined, Dave had tried to do right by him, at first only because of his love for Lil, but he soon came to love the boy for himself as well, even if he did regularly drive him to drink.

A Search and Rescue for hunters, someone to respond to distress beacons before the individual in question was killed, and an emergency courier for outposts in need... it was a good idea. A damn good one. It would need more people, an organisation if anything, but the extra safety blanket might encourage more people to invest in the hunters, it might revitalise recruitment efforts, and provide hunters with more learning opportunities beyond 'sink or swim'. Or as Lindblum once declared 'git gud scrub' while drunk off his ass.

He'd need to be based in Duscae primarily, it would give him the best launching point for rescue operations anywhere in the country. With a good chocobo, he could probably reach the Insomnian blockade in two days from central Duscae. Wiz's outpost was naturally the best point for this endeavour thinking about it, it was set almost directly between two major routes into Leide, and lead into the heart of Duscae allowing for travel into Cleigne within a day.

It was also in enough of an insignificant location that there were no Niff bases near-by.

"We'll talk it over with Wiz. Eat yer food. We'll spend the night up at Prairie, and push on tomorrow once I've finished business," he declared, finally putting the practically vibrating thirteen year old out of his misery.

"Oh. Okay. But... what do you think? Is it a good idea?" he asked hesitantly, slowly reaching for his fork.

Dave nodded, "Damn good idea. Let's find out if its possible."

Lumen beamed at him.

 _ **0000**_

 **CHOCOBO SEARCH AND RESCUE BITCHES! I have been sat on this idea for months, literally. I have saved more stranded cars and injured hunters on chocobo back than I ever did on the regalia.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Four**

 _ **TRIGGER WARNING:**_ **This chapter will depict non-graphic physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse, as well as minor animal abuse.**

Given Lumen's age, realising his ambition to create a Search and Rescue operation was near-enough impossible. Looking at everything written down on paper made it look very difficult indeed.

In practice, it was deceptively easy.

People feared daemons, they feared monsters, many of them feared ever setting foot outside their villages and hometowns no matter what the reason, there were incidents across the entirety of the Lucis continent of citizens whose power had gone out, but instead of fleeing to the nearest town, had hunkered down in their homes, too scared to leave, and ultimately died on the claws of the daemons they thought they could hide from. Deaths on the road were high due to the unfortunate propensity of car failure. The mortality rates of hunters out on jobs was _always_ high, and frighteningly enough: climbing.

Lumen's first hurdle in his endeavours was money. He needed gil to implement his ideas. First to register his business as official, secondly to create the equipment he needed to track the hunters, relay stations to pick up their signals, and staff to communicate that information to him. The infrastructure of the system existed in a crude form in the Hunter's radio outposts, and the infant mobile phone network that had been trickling out from Insomnia. He could build off that, but again, he needed the gil to create it. And that meant sponsors. Which was where that fear came in.

"Your best bet would be talking to old Ezma," Vega explained as the two of them sat at a fold out picnic table in the Prairie outpost in Leide, Lumen wrinkled his nose at her suggestion and the pretty brunette woman mimicked him, "but that's obviously a no go." Everyone knew that Dave's mother had _hated_ Lilium, not for rejecting her son, but for being exactly like she had once been as a young woman: beautiful, headstrong, powerful, and volatile. Ezma saw her as a threat, and her son as little more than a cuckoo in the nest. No one wanted to cross Ezma. Not after she banished her own sister to live in the wilds, and forbade any hunter from coming to her aid.

"I wouldn't do it anyway," the thirteen year old admitted bitterly. After the way she tried to offload him onto his Aunt in Insomnia, knowing the bad-blood between his mother and her, calling him a bad-luck charm as if it were _his_ fault that his mother was killed that night... It had taken a long time, and a lot of talks with Dave, with a few other hunters, with a few _mothers_ , and he had come to understand that he was eight years old, there was nothing different that he could have done. He had done the best thing that he could have in that situation by keeping a cool head and heading for the nearest Haven. If it hadn't been him, then it could have been any other child within the convoy, any other man or woman. His mother would have laid her life down for any of them in a heartbeat.

She would say constantly that she wasn't so altruistic, she would snap and snarl, and declare herself the queen of all ice-bitches, but time and again she would throw herself into danger, into combat, to save others. It was only the fact she returned alive that allowed her to deflect, to brag that she was confident enough in her skills to know that her life had never been in danger. But now that Lumen was older, he could remember how she would hold him tighter on those nights, how she would sometimes whisper apologies into his hair when she thought he was sleeping, and of course, how she jarred awake in her sleep, voice trapped in her lungs, nightmares of what never came to pass fogging her mind. He was not a bad luck charm. Sometimes... sometimes you could do everything right, be the strongest there ever was, and still lose. That night... was just one of those times. And he hated Ezma Auburnbrie for trying to make him believe it was his fault, an eight year old child's, and the feeling was 100% mutual.

Vega nodded, gossip in hunter circles was usually the depressing kind – who died, who got maimed, who dropped out and handed their tags in, etc. Rarely did they have good news, like children being born, or marriages being arranged. And the unreasonable hatred of their headwoman towards the young son of one of her own was not perhaps happy, it was certainly a better conversation topic than the dead towns in Leide where the power was intermittent and unreliable, or the villages with its missing children in southern Duscae, or the Niflheim interests up near the Vesperpool. It was through those gossip sessions that everyone learned of what happened to her sister Kimya, a woman with magical abilities to fight daemons, who used to aid the hunters in their activities by selling them potions and medicines she made. Ezma never referred to her sister by name, pretended she didn't even have one, and when forced to discuss the woman referred to her only as a witch and forbade any from contacting her at her place of banishment – Malmalam Thicket. They had all unanimously agreed not to tell Lumen about Kimya, knowing that the boy would immediately go to her, if only to spite Ezma, which would place Dave into an even more difficult position.

Lumen dragged the sheet of paper that they had been brainstorming on over to himself, "I can get the tech aspect sorted on the cheap, I have an in with the petrol-heads up at Hammerhead. Cid's not got much to do these days with Cindy taking over most of the shop so he ends up rattling around a little, feeling like a third wheel. This'll give him something to sink his teeth into for a while, he'll like that I think. And Cindy's got friends up in the EXINERIS plant, if she can get me into contact with them, we can see about getting access to their relay towers for the tracker signals," he explained, writing a few things down, oblivious to the small handful of hunters that primarily worked out of this outpost earwigging like shameless teenagers.

Vega whistled, "Cid Sophiar? That old grinch? He's famous for being a tightass when it comes to gil, kiddo. You sure you can pull that one off?" she asked sceptically.

He nodded as he continued writing, "Mum was the one that saved Cindy when Keycatrich fell."

Vega closed her mouth with a click of teeth, and several of the hunters around them promptly looked away.

Keycatrich ruins were only three miles away from them, only an hour's walk.

"If I can talk to some of the people in charge at EXINERIS, I can maybe spin some sponsorship out of them too. Provide some courier duties in exchange for use of their towers." He scratched at his ear with a frown, "I'd need someone with some legal know-how to look over any documents to make sure they don't screw me over... big companies do that sort of thing, don't they?" he asked, peering up at her. She shrugged. She was as much of a roadie as he was, born and raised in the back of a truck by her hunter parents, same as him, only she'd gotten radios and wires into her brain instead of chocobos and rescue operations. If it didn't require electricity, she was going to be useless with it.

"You'll wanna talk to Sophiar 'bout that too," one of the earwigging hunters recommended. Balamb was an older guy, a bit more well connected than one would think, he tended to visit the racing circuit more than his missus would have liked given his bad habit of gambling a little bit of gil here and there, now and again. "Heard he used to travel with some fancy folk from the Crown City, he'd have some connections there, I'd think."

Lumen shook his head, "Not anymore. Had a falling out with them over the refugee policy – I think he wanted to get his daughter and her family into the city proper, but couldn't." ' _Out of Keycatrich_ ' went unsaid, but certainly implied.

Balamb shook his head, "Naw kid, good thinking but not what I meant. He owns an' runs his own business. That means paperwork, permits, and negotiations. He'd have some connections to get you a lot further than a pile'a dusty weapon heads like the rest of us," he pointed out with a grin, ducking his head when a papercup went soaring in his direction along with a lot of jeering.

Lumen grinned, "I might not be able to get legal advice from you guys, but you can help me in other ways. Like telling me what you need, and how I can help. This whole business is to help you, but I've never gone on an official hunt, I'm too young. So you're going to have to tell me everything."

There were a great deal of scraping chairs, and suddenly Lumen was surrounded by the rest of the hunters that had been listening in.

"That we can do, kiddo," Balamb assured him with a grin as a plate of something hot, and probably greasy was shoved under his nose. "You may need some more paper though."

 _ **000**_

Cid was more than happy to help him with his idea. Lumen had been more right than he realised when he said Cid had been feeling like a third wheel as Cindy took over the shop from him, he was as proud as could be, but he hadn't yet gotten used to being a 'gentleman of leisure' in his retirement. Lumen's little rescue operation was just the kind of project he needed to sink his teeth into.

Cindy was eager to help too, and put him into contact with her friend Holly up in Lestallum. Holly, it seemed, had an absolutely crippling phobia of daemons, and was willing to personally pour half of her paycheque into his endeavours if her efforts to get the bigwigs at EXINERIS to sponsor him fell through.

Luckily for them all they were just as terrified, and saw his efforts as good publicity for relatively little cost.

Cid wasn't too keen to leave Hammerhead, but Cindy was in her twenties and practically running the place herself, leaving him with far too much time on his hands to cook himself in his sunlounger – he found himself moving up to Lestallum briefly to help Holly and Lumen get his tracking systems operational. Utilising the cable car pylons to pick up and transmit the alerts from the hunters, EXINERIS were able to add to their public image as a company that cared about the well being of their people and for small local businesses. Cid and Holly spearheaded the negotiations on that front while Lumen worked to create the software he needed for it, fielding calls and making visits to both Cindy and Vega in Leide.

Now that he was fourteen, Dave had given him his own phone to communicate with others, and, of all things he never expected to see again, his mother's Titan Axe. The huge double-headed battle axe was taller than him, blade and pole included, and twice as wide, it was _heavy._ Too heavy for Lumen to wield right now, but he vowed to be just as good as his mother with it. Especially when he saw the strip of yellow cloth she had tied to the hilt.

He had forgotten she had it.

He had been perhaps four? Maybe a little older, or a little younger? He had overheard some hunter panicking because he had gone on a job without his Good Luck Charm, a little cactuar charm his sister had made for him. When the hunter's tags returned instead of him, Lumen had become scared. His mother did not have a good luck charm that he knew of back then, so he had asked Dave what they were. Charms could be anything, but the best ones were the ones given by the people that loved you, and wanted you to come home safe. So Lumen had taken his little handful of gil to the market in Lestallum when they passed through, he had handed over every last one to the pretty lady behind the counter and asked her for the yellow ribbon with the red flowers on it. He hadn't been very good at counting, and didn't nearly have enough gil for it, but the woman had given it to him anyway. He then proceeded to ruin the pretty ribbon with a permanent marker – carefully using his best handwriting and writing on the back of it 'Yoo kAn doo it mama I Luv Yoo kik its Bum'.

Untying it from the hilt just beneath the axe head, he stared at the completely illegible handwriting and how the permanent marker had bled across the yellow fabric, staining it grey and green in places where it must have gotten wet, at the way it had ruined the flowers embroidered into the fabric, and at how his mother had tied it to her weapon and never removed it since he gave it to her.

Carefully, he retied it to the shaft and let the massive weapon burst into crystalline light, tucking it away in his magic pocket. He would practice with it later, he would need to. And get hold of a few other weapons as well – perhaps he could beg Dave to pick him up a Radiant Lance the next time he passed through Meldacio, the less he saw Ezma the better.

 _ **000**_

It took two years in total to get everything arranged as well as learning more first-aid, mechanics, electronics, mounted combat, and chocobo care in order to do the best job he could physically do.

His work done, Cid returned to Leide citing that the humidity of Cleigne was hell on his lungs and the winter was colder than Shiva's tit – he wanted back to his machine shop and the desert. Holly was still his primary point of contact within Lestallum, she'd even joked about adopting him like Cindy before ruffling his hair and sending him on his way with a peculiar look on her face. She was definitely planning something, that woman. He and Dave were now largely separated, his father off on hunts and tag retrievals as per usual with his motorbike which he now had a lot more space in without Lumen and his belongings getting in the way – but he confessed to getting lonely, so Lumen got him a dog. She was just a puppy right now, but he had already begun to train her in basic commands, and a few more complex ones like sniffing out daemons and dead bodies. He had been training a few chocobos with Wiz in the same things, and while the pup wasn't as smart as the large birds, it was more obedient. With the dog's help, Dave would be able to avoid troublesome daemons he might not be able to handle while on tag retrieval.

Vega was his primary point of contact up in Leide, manning the switchboards and communications network he had set up in the Prairie outpost alongside her radio operations for the Hunters. Cindy was of course a key point in his efforts, she saw a lot of hunters in and out of Hammerhead and had practically demanded a signal transmitter set up to protect her customers.

Galdin Quay had approached him about perhaps bolstering their own public image by providing signal support, and it was while he was there discussing it with the headchef of the Mother of Pearl restaurant that he encountered Dino again. The aspiring jeweller had taken the writing job that his mother had recommended, he was reporting on the Mother of Pearl for a company called Meteor Publishing – they operated out of Lestallum in Cleigne. He wasn't thrilled, but hey, it sent a little more money back home to ma and the little ones, and gave him some saving for his true passion.

"In fact, while I've got ya here, how 'bout an interview?" Dino asked with a grin nodding to the beach where he could see Lumen's chocobo attracting a few children down to the carpark. "Chocobo Search an' Rescue, huh? Boss has been trying to get the scoop on that fer a while now, just my luck to know the man behind the magic, eh?" he teased with a grin.

Thankfully, this was something Cid and Dave had given him advice about. His idea was just enough out of the left field that it would attract attention, his age would draw attention, and then – much to Cid's disgust as he pointed it out – there was also his looks to take into consideration as well. Attractive people would always draw attention. Someone attractive doing an unusual, somewhat dangerous job that saved lives, and was, in fact, the one to spearhead and create the venture would be cause for sensation. Whether he liked it or not he was going to draw attention.

So he ordered some of Coctura's lovely food, slyly asking her if Nayvth had popped his fishy head up recently, she grinned and told him that the very fish she was cooking up for him had been caught by her uncle. He was always sending her weird and wonderful fish to experiment with. When the food arrived, he and Dino sat down properly and had their interview, then Lumen took him out to introduce him to Nimbus, his chocobo.

Turned out Concita wasn't as old as everyone had first assumed, she'd laid herself an egg about a year after Lumen first hit upon his idea. They had expected a fairly ordinary chocobo to hatch from the egg, so it was to great surprise when a little back head emerged instead of the expected yellow. Concita, the little snob, had hooked up with a wild black male after snubbing every single yellow male on the farm.

That had been Nimbus. Wiz had been so happy at the hatching of one of the endangered blacks he had ended up full on crying into Camille's shoulder for ten minutes straight while Lumen fed the little thing its first greens as Concita warbled happily in her nest. That seemed to cement the little black's opinion of Lumen because where-ever he went, the black tried to follow, and would get awfully noisy and troublesome when denied. When she was a chick it was easy to deal with, as she got bigger, it got harder to restrain her from following him out of the farm as he went around to set his work up.

It got to the point where she showed up unexpectedly during one night outside the Alster Coernix Station when he had been sleeping in the caravan for the night – and woke up to her tapping impatiently on the windows. He then had to deal with the slew of heartbroken texts from Wiz about how she had either spooked or found a male to her liking and run away from the farm, how he wished her the best but still worried, and if he saw her could he please send him an update? Lumen was pretty sure he was crying over the phone when he called to let him know she had come straight to him instead of running off into the wilderness never to be seen again. From that point on he had been forced to give up hitchhiking and start riding, and of course training her.

Nimbus was incredibly intelligent, and even though blacks weren't considered to be better stock than yellows, she definitely had the benefit of her mother's racing genes, and her wild father's hardiness. She was a very fast, and very tough bird. And, in Lumen's humble and _completely unbiased_ opinion, the prettiest bird in all of Lucis as well.

Something he told her often, much to Dino's amusement when Lumen greeted her like usual – lavishing scratches and pets on her.

It was only right, in his opinion, to spoil her a little. During their drills she often sprinted half-way across Duscae with two people on her back, as well as through various monster dens with Lumen on her back wielding his mother's axe in one hand. An axe he had started to walk around with strapped to his back instead of in his crystalline pockets. He couldn't very well summon it out of nowhere during combat around his rescuees, and if people saw him running around without it one moment, and five minutes later he had it in hand, whether they saw him retrieve it or not, they would think it strange. Best not give them anything to get suspicious over. So he wore it brazenly for all to see. Dino asked him to flex a bicep, and, bewildered, he had done so. The reporter shook his head in a mixture of awe and disgust as he tried to wrap a hand around his arm and failed.

"I miss when yous were scrawny. Didn't make me feel quite so pathetic, y'know," he grumped before grinning. "Well, get that monster of an axe out and stand by the bird. I gotta take a picture if I'm gunna publish this."

Given how it was the first official interview piece regarding his efforts, he was very pleased to see the positive slant that Dino had put on the article when he found it emblazoned across a magazine cover in Lestallum. He got multiple texts from Holly and then later Dave when they got hold of their own copies – he could expect a few from Coctura, Cid, Cindy, and Vega once the issues began to circulate in Leide.

It was around then that the software aspect he had linked in with the hunters radios kicked in, and he found himself with more work than he knew what to do with.

After spending so long getting everything arranged, the change from set up to action was _jarring_.

Welcome, but jarring, and a little overwhelming to be honest.

Thank the Six for Nimbus' hardiness. He didn't think even Concita would have been able to keep up with the sudden jump in activity he suddenly had on his plate.

One moment he was rescuing a hunter from the ruins of Saxholm Outpost, hauling them to the outpost just to the north, the next he was racing for Astor Slough to rescue an idiot who thought he could tangle with a Catoblepas. He had to deal with a few 'test-runs' from several hunters who set their beacons off just to see how long it would take him to get to them. And how determined he was to get to them – one set his off inside Callaten's Plunge, forcing Lumen to sprint past the level sixty-three Jormandir serpent that had claimed the river fork.

He couldn't blame them for the test, but he did tell them that if they did it again they could very well kill someone who legitimately needed his help – if he was sprinting to them, so a non-issue, when someone else was in danger, he would be thoroughly pissed off, and set them to explaining to that person's family why they weren't coming home.

Despite being only fifteen, he apparently cut an intimidating enough figure to get the hunters to agree, that or they couldn't refute the logic in his argument. Though he had known many a stubborn hunter to throw logic out of the window in favour of proving themselves right even when everything around them said otherwise. Hunters were a bullheaded determined lot.

Six months into the change over, he found his popularity soaring entirely without his notice. Whenever he stopped off at an outpost, he had people coming over to thank him for saving their cousins, friends, siblings, partners, whatever. Diners offered him free food, tipsters detailed local hunts and hunters, telling him which ones were in what area – just in case, and motels often were willing to give him a free bed for the night.

Dino called him for another interview, and once that was done, he found himself being contacted by one of the local Duscaean radio stations for an on-air interview, which he was happy to provide in order to explain his efforts and everything that was going on, and advise motorists and others how best to contact him if they were in need, how to take care of themselves out on the road, and some basic survival tips that would increase their chances of staying alive long enough for him to reach him in the dark.

When money got tight, he found himself chocobo racing as he wasn't yet old enough for hunting. That was where he met his first girlfriend, and possibly his biggest mistake.

Invidia Vorax was only four years his senior, nineteen, and the daughter of the Cleigne motorcross race-track owner, a race-track that was also often used in chocobo racing now that the sport was seeing an increase in popularity. The Vorax family were rich, and influential, owning stocks in EXINERIS and Coernix, as well as owning hotels around various areas in Cleigne and Duscae. Lumen hadn't known any of this when the beautiful young woman approached him after a race to compliment him on his riding technique and heap a great deal of praise onto Nimbus – and, well, anyone who thought well of Nimbus was alright by him.

At the time, he'd thought Nimbus's dislike of Invidia touching her had just been because she was sweaty and tired after her race and wanted a bath and some greens. He should have paid more attention.

Looking back, it was probably safe to say it had been something of a whirlwind romance to an outside observer. Invidia had been the picture perfect girlfriend to Lumen who had been both younger, and painfully inexperienced in such matters as well as being semi-feral to boot. Their roles seemed to be completely reversed, the older teenager had done everything by the book but taking the boyfriend's role instead, she lavished him with expensive gifts, told him jokes, took him out to dinner at expensive diners he couldn't hope to pay for himself, declaring herself a strong independent woman and refusing to let him pay for her, listening to him when he spoke – for someone who had never met anyone with such nice manners (or clean hands), it was safe to say that Lumen had been both overwhelmed and easily taken in.

Enough so that the few comments here and there that would have thrown up red flags in his mind were not noticed. It started small, like always. Vidi expressing concern over his lack of sleep, how it must be impacting his health, encouraging him to take a nap here and there whenever he came over, cajoling him into sleeping in every now and again. Suggesting he perhaps take a step back from a situation that had him so hot under the collar and think twice about it, saying she would always support his decisions but that she didn't like how _this_ person, or _that_ person spoke to him, and how he deserved better.

She didn't push him sexually, at least, not for a long time. But whenever they went too far and Lumen pulled back, she would be so put out and upset, even while she said it was okay, that the fifteen year old felt wretched and awful every time. Until such a point that... even though he didn't want to... he didn't try to stop her one night, and Vidi got what she wanted. She wasn't rough or cruel about it. But Lumen gave in once, and – that clearly meant he wasn't opposed anymore, so Vidi started pushing him for more, and more.

What little time he had outside his Search and Rescue was eaten up by his girlfriend who, somehow without his realising, became one of the biggest parts of his life. And one of the most controlling. With his rescue operation taking off, Vidi offered to help him with paperwork and several other aspects, and desperate for the help, Lumen had agreed – and it seemed to work, he had some time freed up, but it was quickly eaten away by other things, like the advertising arrangements that Vidi had made on his behalf to raise funds for his work, slapping his name and image on products across Cleigne and Duscae, sending him off to radio interviews, dressing him up in fancy frog-suits and parading him around like a prized chocobo at black tie dinner events that her father hosted.

It wasn't until Lumen got injured on a job and found himself relegated to bedrest that it hit him.

He hadn't seen Dave in over half a year. Nor heard from Cindy or Cid, Holly, Wiz, Camille, or even Dino. None of them came to visit him either.

When he felt recovered enough to get out and about, though still not enough to take up work again, he tried to get back into contact with them – only to find that the numbers on his phone didn't work... in fact, looking at Dave's contact details, he realised the number was _wrong_. That meant all the messages he had sent his father that had gone unanswered in the last year were because he simply hadn't received them. He decided to take some time to go and visit his friends and family.

Invidia had not liked that. She had made arrangements for Lumen to do several talk-shows on the radio, join her father and her at the big motorcross event up at the Vesperpool, and the grand opening of their new race-track in Ravatogh. He had apologised, telling her he just didn't feel up to it, right now he only wanted to see his family.

That was when she hit him.

They had both seemed to be shocked by the incident, and, horrified, Vidi apologised profusely and had done everything in her power to try and make it up to him. Gave him gil, personally drove him to Lestallum to meet with Holly who practically squeezed the life out of him when she saw him.

She looked suspicious and doubtful when she heard about his phone troubles, but reprogrammed her number into his device. And then went a step further. With Invidia off dealing with her father, explaining that they would be absent, she bought him a second mobile phone, and told him to keep it secret from everyone.

"I know a thing or three about women. You ever need any advice? You come talk to me, okay sugar?" she whispered as she slid the device into his pocket, and planted a kiss on his forehead. "And tell Dave to grow a pair already and call me. I know I came on a little too strong, but he can't remain a hermit for the rest of his life, and this lady is lonely. Get me?" she added, a little louder, with a toothy grin as Lumen groaned in disgust.

"Holly! That's gross! He's my _Dad!_ "

"What can I say? I'm attracted to responsibility," she teased, guffawing at the look of abject horror on his face.

He ended up calling Holly a lot in the next few months.

At seventeen, his relationship with Invidia had only gotten worse. She rarely ever hit him, but it did happen. Whenever Lumen was injured, or sick, she seemed more liable to physically lash out than before. It was something he admitted confused him when he spoke to Holly about it. He knew he was difficult to live with at times, hell, he knew Dave had wanted to wallop him more than once when he was younger, and his mother hadn't been shy about slapping him upside the head if she thought he needed it, it just confused him that Invidia only ever did it when he was unwell. It wasn't like she could actually _hurt_ Lumen otherwise, he was pretty sturdy. Holly had gone awfully quiet and then suggested that maybe that was the point, and that she might be scared that Lumen would hit back if he were well, and, after all, Lumen was stronger than her despite being younger, and smaller.

"I would never!" he protested, stung at the very idea that he would be the kind of person who hit his partner.

"I know, sugar, you're a good kid. We love you, don't ever forget that," she assured him kindly, which, she had been saying that a lot. It made him happy to hear even if it seemed a little odd. Was she trying to convince herself, or him? He knew they loved him, even if Invidia found the lack of obvious contact between them as something of a snub. He wanted to tell her about the secret phone, but Holly had been pretty firm about keep it secret. Just in case he ran into a fan who got weird and stole his main phone.

In the end, the precaution was necessary.

She tried to cripple Nimbus.

He had woke up in the middle of the night to find the bed empty, and had a _horrible_ feeling in the pit of his stomach. Holly's words circling in his head about how Vidi must have been scared he might leave her, hence why she was trying so hard to be useful, _invaluable_ to him.

Then he heard Nimbus shrieking.

He was out of bed before his eyes had even fully adjusted to the darkness, barefoot, shirtless, he summoned his daggers from the Crystalline, and burst outside, skidding in the mud from the rain overheard, and straight into the paddock where Nimbus was shrieking.

"Vidi!" he yelled, spotting his girlfriend kneeling down beside his bird, trying to sooth her.

Her hands were covered in blood, and Nimbus' leg was torn open.

At that exact moment, no matter how much his instincts told him otherwise, he believed she was trying to help. That something had attacked his bird, something that could still be there, and attack his girlfriend as well. And then he saw the way she tried to hide something under her shirt, and saw how Nimbus tried to get away from her, but couldn't because of the hand she had clamped on the bird's leg – right at the bottom of the wound, pressing hard, and pushing. Forcing the blood out.

He felt cold, his skin crawled, and his ears began to ring.

"Get away from her."

"Lu-"

He pointed the dagger at her chin, and she snapped her mouth shut, those lovely brown eyes he had convinced himself that he loved these last two years widening. "Get. Away. From my _Bird,_ " he hissed through gritted teeth. "How dare you. You – what were you _thinking_ , you disgusting – get out of my sight. Now!" he commanded.

"Lumen -" she tried again, desperate, her voice thick with the promise of tears as she jumped to her feet and reached out for him. The knife she'd used to cut Nimbus slipping out of her nightshirt to hit the ground. It was one of the serrated steak knives they had been eating off of that night, clean of their meal, left to dry in the kitchen. He felt cold. If she had successfully hidden it, he would have been absolutely none the wiser. She'd have just washed it up with their breakfast dishes and he would have carried on with life, worrying over Nimbus but believing her on the side of Angels.

"GET OUT!" he roared.

She jumped violently, and bolted, rushing back to the house, and he dropped the dagger to immediately go to his bird.

Nimbus crooned as he got to her, "Oh, Nim, I'm so sorry. I should have seen it sooner," he whispered as he stroked her head. She had never liked Indivia, tolerated her, but unless Lumen was there she was more liable to ignore or bite his girlfriend than deal with her. Well, ex-girlfriend now.

Careless as to whether or not she could see from the house, or whether or not she was even watching him, Lumen summoned an elixer from the Crystalline and applied it to the jagged tears in Nim's leg, watching in relief as the wounds healed over without a sign they had even been there.

As much damaged as a serrated knife could have done, Lumen made sure all his blades were incredibly sharp – a dull knife was the most dangerous to have in a kitchen. So really, serrated or not, it was an easy wound to fix.

If only the damage to his trust and heart were so easy.

He hadn't even waited for sunrise before he grabbed all of his things from the house, her house technically, and he left, stiffly telling her it was over and if she came near his chocobo again he would do what he had to in order to protect her. Invidia cried, begged him not to go, tried to threaten him with her father, tell him that she would pull her sponsorship, his contracts, when that didn't work she threatened to kill herself because she couldn't live without him. He knew full well she wasn't suicidal, she never had been, she wasn't even depressed.

"I can't raise our child alone! I'll die! I'd _rather_ die than do it alone!" she'd screamed at his departing back. "Lumen! I'm pregnant! It's yours! Your baby! You can't DO this!"

That... _had_ given him pause. But he knew full well she wasn't. It was something Wiz told him when he first started training Nimbus and saw how weird she acted around one of the customers. Chocobos knew when a woman was pregnant, often before she did. And Nim, no matter how much she disliked the human in question, she always displayed those same behaviours – grooming, presenting nesting materials, foraging food stuffs, and pulling her own down-feathers out to help pad the nest out for the egg.

He kept riding. Ignoring his ex screaming at his back about how much she hated him, and cursed him to the Infernal's Realm.

He called her father to tell him what happened, the man didn't believe him, Lumen told him it didn't matter if he believed it or not, he was done with Invidia, and would like his contracts with their family dissolved, he was cutting ties with the lying bitch who would not only attack his chocobo but also fake pregnancy and being suicidal to keep a relationship with him.

Then he called Holly to tell her what happened.

She told him to come to Lestallum immediately, and as soon as he arrived, he found himself whisked into a hug he hadn't realised he'd needed. A hug that... he was ashamed to admit, reminded him so much of his mother that he found himself bursting into tears and clinging to her for all he was worth – ignorant to the EXINERIS workers who had stopped to watch the spectacle, and just as quickly turned away to give them some privacy. She bundled him back into her apartment, called off work citing a family emergency, and called the others.

Dave arrived within the night, and Lumen woke up to find his father stroking his hair, and found himself in another bone-crushing hug, and another bout of tears as he explained everything.

He spoke to both Cid and Cindy on the phone, the young woman spitting mad and commanding her father to hold down the fort while she went to Duscae and beat some manners into the 'little bitch'. Holly told her to get in line in what was possibly the harshest tone of voice Lumen had ever heard out of her yet. Dave said nothing, just held him a little tighter and kissed his forehead.

"I'm sorry y'all had to deal with that, Firefly," his dad apologised softly, voice a comforting rumble in his ear as he curled up into him, head tucked under his chin against his chest.

Lumen leaned into him tiredly, "It – she wasn't – I don't know what happened. She's not... She's not that kind of person." She wasn't, she... couldn't be.

Dave was quiet for a moment before he rubbed the seventeen year old's arms comfortingly, and kissed his hair again, "Did y'all ever hit her?" he asked.

"Astrals, no! No, never! I would never! She's my _girlfriend!_ Was... my girlfriend," he exclaimed, his voice dropping to a depressed murmur as he corrected himself.

"Y'all never hit her. So what makes it alright fer her t'hit you?" he asked flatly, and Lumen felt his breath hitch in his throat as he tried to answer, but...

"That's – that's different. She's a girl, I shouldn't – it – you can't hit girls," he tried to explain.

Dave chuckled, "I think yer momma would'a had something t'say on that. Several sumthin's. Y'all don't hold back against the huntresses y'spar against. What makes them so different?"

"They're trained. Vidi was... she was a lady, she doesn't know how to defend herself," he explained, nodding a little as he concluded this.

"But she's still yer girlfriend. If y'all can't hit her because'a that, what makes it okay fer her t'hit her boyfriend? Especially when he's younger'n her? Especially when he's sick, or injured. Iff'n it were me gettin' hit, or Cid, would that be alright?" Dave asked.

Lumen shook his head, feeling his stomach churn, "No, no, it wouldn't be! Dave, no! It's – not – that's _different_ – you – she didn't –"

Dave shifted, and used a hand to turn his son's head to look him in the eye, "If y'all were a girl, and she were a fella, an' she _still_ did everythin' that she did... would that be okay?"

He felt sick.

"No."

Dave hugged him tightly, pressing another kiss to his forehead as he started to cry again. He wasn't okay, not by a long shot but... he would get there. Eventually.

 _ **0000**_

 **Abuse isn't always physical violence, and yes, I firmly believe men can be physically, sexually, mentally, AND emotionally abused just as badly as women. Originally Invidia was going to be Angustus, a dude, but Rei pointed out it would be much more... effective to have it as a woman. She's not wrong. But yeah. Lumen's had a bit of a rollercoaster of a relationship with her.**

 **NEXT CHAPTER IS THE CHOCOBROS**


	5. Chapter 5

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Five**

There was no mistaking the smell of chocobos, even for a group of city boys like them.

The thick hot musky smell of animal flesh, dung, damp hay, and feed was under cut by the smell of cooking meats from the restaurant and the clear evergreen forest around them as they pulled in, making stomachs rumble and mouths water appreciatively even as Prompto practically scrambled out of the car, his eyes wider than they'd ever been with excitement as he laid eyes on the yellow heaven of his dreams.

"Now _this_ is what I'm talkin' about!" he exclaimed excitedly as he bounced several steps forward, drinking in the white painted fencing, the yellow canopies, the garden furniture beneath large parasols, and the grasses teaming with wild flowers.

Gladio sighed in mirth as he followed along in their wake, closing the regalia door behind him, "Kid's got it bad," he lamented fondly as Noct and Prompto rushed on ahead to where they could see a man in a cap and jeans cleaning down a table. He must work there.

"There are _worse_ vices, I suppose," Ignis agreed tiredly as his two 'big kids' threw excited grins over their shoulders. He locked the regalia and moved to join them, glancing around them with... rising bewilderment actually. He may not have slept in two days, and was running almost wholesale on ebony and anxiety, but he was fairly sure that there was something wrong here. There were no other customers, either tourist or racer, and nor were there any _chocobos_ either. There were stalls, and pens, and baskets full of feed, and he could most definitely _hear_ the birds on the wind (and smell them unfortunately), but there was not a single yellow feather to be seen on the property. How strange. Prompto would surely be heartbroken if something had happened to the animals – Noct had confided in him a long time ago they were his favourite animal in the world. Ignis had made sure that every birthday cake he made for the young man from that point on had been chocobo themed, and he had always received a very nice thank you for his efforts afterwards.

Prompto sidled up to the older man as he wiped the last of the dust and whatever else had settled on the outside table off with a cloth, "Excuse me?" he interrupted, guilty for doing so, but too excited to wait, he could feel his insides practically vibrating. He had _dreamed_ of this moment since he was six years old and watching a documentary on Chocobos late one night. "We'd like to ride the chocobos?" he said, halfway between begging and asking as the older guy turned around, his weather beaten face a little stunned to even see them.

His face fell a little, "The chocobos, huh?" he echoed, "I hate t'break this to y'all, but we can't permit our birds t'leave the post. Not while Deadeye's still about," he explained unhappily, but firmly. "He's an uncommonly ferocious Behemoth that's taken to prowlin' these here parts. His scent makes our birds nervous, and in order t'prevent accidents an' tragedies, we've no choice but to suspend services. Should be back up soon though. I called in an old friend'a mine to take up the hunt fer ol' Deadeye, he ought be arrivin' soon..."

"Soon huh?" Noct echoed as Prompto had deflated so entirely he slumped in place.

The old guy whom they were assuming was Wiz Farlane, the founder and owner of the chocobo ranch, nodded thoughtfully, giving them the eyeball, "That's right. Before lunch at the very soonest. But, say, ain't you the new hunters what's been makin' a mark up in Leide?"

Noctis grimaced, well, they'd taken a lot of marks in order to pay for goods and the like. They needed the money now more than ever – especially with him technically being dead and on the run from the Empire (Gladio's cup noodle addiction was not cheap).

"Think y'all could help out with huntin' Deadeye? I worry 'bout sendin' Lu off t'face these sort's o'things by himself," he admitted guiltily. "If y'can bring the beast down, there'll be a reward in it for ya!" he quickly hastened to explain, "But knowing th'danger, I wouldn't blame y'fer saying no."

"Wiz!"

The group turned to spot a black chocobo trotting into the farm with its rider waving cheerfully in the saddle.

Prompto stared, and then grabbed hold of his buddy, "Noct. Noct! That's – that's the – oh. em. Gee. _That's the Chocobo Search and Rescue guy!_ " he practically squealed, semi-shaking, and slapping at Noct's shoulder and arm as he went into full-on fanboy glee. Much to the amusement of his friends.

"The what?" Gladio asked in amusement.

"The Chocobo Search and Rescue guy!" Prompto repeated excitedly as the young man swung off his black chocobo as Wiz and several other people made their way over, a few rougher looking guys by the Cutlass weapon's van waving and calling cheerful greetings as he passed. "He's like, _huge_. Remember when Cid gave us that keychain charm, and told us to download that emergency app? That's for Chocobo Search and Rescue. You're out on the road and your car breaks down? Use the emergency app, he'll come running out to you with a Repair kit toot-sweet. If he's on the otherside of he country and can't reach you before nightfall, he'll text you a map and instructions of how to reach the nearest haven as quickly as possible. You're on a hunt and you're in over your head, get hurt and manage to escape but can't get to safety? Set your beacon off and he'll come and he'll find you, administer medical aid, haul you to a haven and go right back out to find the next guy. He's totally a hero," the blond babbled excitedly as the teenager was enfolded into tight hugs by Wiz and several other people around the farm. "He's done radio shows about how to survive on foot out in the wild, handling various monsters, he's done a lot of advertisement stuff too in order to raise money for the job, practically run from one end of Lucis to the other looking for sponsors and setting it all up. He's younger than us as well."

"A self made man then, hm?" Ignis observed with some admiration despite himself.

"Oh totally. I wonder if he'd let me get a picture?" Prompto wondered longingly.

"Well, looks like you'll get your chance to ask pretty soon," Noct murmured as he saw Wiz gesturing to them as he spoke to the dark haired guy, and then led him over.

Gladio jerked, "...That..." he trailed off into awkward silence as the two came over.

"Wiz tells me you guys want to help out against Deadeye?" the young man asked with a smile, looking _up_ at them.

Gladio's eyes must have been playing tricks on him, they had to be. He glanced over at Ignis who was red eyed and exhausted but still much sharper than he was even on a bad day, and _Iggy_ hadn't noticed anything weird so... so clearly he must have been wrong. But – that was one hell of a resemblance.

"Yeah. My friend here's been looking forward to meeting the chocobos since he was a kid, so," Noct shrugged as he jerked a thumb at Prompto who very quickly turned red with embarrassment when the stranger looked at him. "I figure we help out, the ranch is happy, and he gets to meet a chocobo, so he's happy. Win-win."

It had to be the hair, Gladio decided.

"Can I get a look at your licence before we get started with anything official?" the kid asked, much to their surprise as they quickly pulled out the required tags. The kid checked each one of them against something on his phone before grinning and apologising, "We've had incidents in the past with fake I.D.s and stolen ones, people getting their fool-selves into trouble, and good hunters injured trying to haul their asses outta the fire. Hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Very prudent of you to check. I must say, it is a first though," Ignis admitted as he adjusted his glasses. Astrals, his eyes ached and burned with exhaustion.

The kid frowned, "I'll have to look into that. Tipsters should be checking before issuing hunts. I get that times are desperate, but that's no excuse," he said as he folded his arms and scowled.

He wasn't very big, maybe five foot three inches in height, he looked bigger with the shoulderblade-length wild mane that he called hair, one side of it braided in four Galahd-style cornrows to just behind his ear where it hung down in long braids tipped with beads. Powder-fine black hair, a familiar shade of ashy blue-black. Fine boned features, large green-green eyes with high cheekbones, and a slightly upturned nose. It was... honestly uncanny. With the exception of the eye colour, and the length of his hair, Gladio would have thought he were looking at _Noctis_ several years younger, and significantly more athletic. Not surprising. If the kid was able to wield the double headed Titan Axe strapped to his back well enough that someone would call on him to tackle a Behemoth _on his own_ , then clearly he was strong. He wore well travelled leathers and denim, a pair of jeans with armoured boots, leather faulds around his waist to protect his thighs, pouches upon pouches upon bags and more pouches attached to the belt around his waist, a much faded dark green Kenny-Crow T-shirt, and a set of hunter tags around his neck.

Gladio was having a fucking _crisis_.

Iggy hadn't noticed.

Noctis _had_ if the slightly weirded out suspicious looks were any indication.

And Prompto – was being assaulted by the black chocobo and loving every second.

"Nimbus! Get out of it!" the Noct-a-like yelped, immediately trying to wrestle his mount away from where it was trying to stick its head down the back of Prompto's shirt in search for treats. "Sorry, she's friendly, but she usually has better manners than this!" he exclaimed, grasping the reigns and hauling the obviously reluctant bird backwards.

"N-no problem! She's _beautiful_! Like I could ever be upset about pretty girls trying to get into my clothes!" Prompto joked happily, far too enchanted with the bird in question to be as anxious or star-struck as before, eagerly reaching back to the black chocobo who was more than pleased to surrender her head to his every enthusiastic pet and scritch.

The kid laughed, "Tell me that after a festival in Lestallum, we'll see what you have to say about pretty girls trying to get into your clothes _then_!" he said as if it were something to be worried about. "I'm Lumen, Lumen Proelia. Yourselves?" he asked brightly, disturbingly friendly and animated for someone that almost had Noct's face – his eyes were noticeably larger and softer, a little bit rounder.

"Didn't you get them off our tags?" Noctis asked sourly, making the teenager laugh.

"Sure did, but it's always polite t'ask," he pointed out with a grin as Prompto continued to coo over his bird, the chocobo kweh'ing happily as she fluffed herself up.

"Gladio, broadsword and shield specialist," the Shield spoke up, figuring that since they would be heading into hostile territory together, a little bit of foreknowledge would be useful. The grateful look he received from Noct-a-like suggested that he'd hit the nail on the head.

"Ignis, daggers and polearms primarily, but I do have some skill in elemancy and tactics," the Igster spoke up from behind them, trying and failing (probably succeeding to anyone who _didn't_ know him) to sound better put together than he actually was.

"Noctis, just about anything, mostly swords though," the Prince, now King, groaned laconically.

"Prompto's the name, gunnin's mah game! Along with machinery, I got a nice one called Bioblaster that causes poison!" the blond chimed in from behind them as he practically hung off the black chocobo.

"That'll come in handy," Lumen agreed before gesturing at his axe, "You can probably tell I'm an axe specialist, but I also use daggers and elemancy. I'm also a _lot_ faster than I look with this thing, so try not to be surprised if I'm here, there, and everywhere," he warned with a cheerful smile. He then checked the sky with a grimace, "I'd rather not deal with Deadeye in the dark, so, let's get some grub and make a push. Nimbus, dinner time," he called to the black who kweh'd sadly and then – tried to hide behind Prompto?

The blond laughed in delight while Lumen sighed, "You're _adorable!_ " their gunner exclaimed, throwing his arms around the chocobo's neck as she happily wiggled and cooed.

"She also shouldn't come into the Nebulawood with a Behemoth kicking around. Not with multiple hunter expeditions," the Rescuer complained, hands on his hips before glancing over his shoulder at them, "You guys order yourselves some food, tell Wiz it's on me since y'all are helpin' out. I'll get madam stabled and join you in a sec," he assured them before darting forward, twisting around Prompto and snagging his chocobo's reins. She kweh'd in surprise and then disappointment, crest feathers drooping. "Don't you try that sad-cute thing on me, missy. Say goodbye to the nice man," he ordered as Prompto cooed. She kweh'd and nudged him before her owner lead her away.

"Quite the pair," Gladio observed.

"They're amazing," Prompto decided breathlessly with glee.

Noct grumbled, folding his arms. He wasn't so impressed. In fact, he was a little creeped out. He knew dopplegangers were a thing in the world, hell, he'd encountered people who had gone so far as to get plastic surgery to _look_ like him or his father in the past. But to find someone who looked like him, sounded like him, but was so completely different in personality, someone whom his bestfriend immediately liked.

He wasn't happy.

 _ **000**_

Lumen had a _ridiculous_ fighting style.

Worthy of what Gladio was beginning to suspect were Lucis Caelum roots of ridiculousness.

He hefted that Titan Axe one handed. Even _he_ would have found that a somewhat difficult task to achieve one-handed. And this kid not only hefted it one handed, or two handed, but he also used the momentum of the blade to flip _himself_ around – like some demented whirling dervish of blades and metal plated feet. Seeing a Behemoth get kicked two-footed in the face hard enough to knock its feet out from under it would forever be a sight that Gladio was never sure if he actually saw, or hallucinated as he inhaled petrol fumes from spilled drums as they ignited under Iggy's elemancy.

They walked back to Wiz's in what was most definitely not silence, Noct seemed to have gotten over his dislike of the kid and was now chattering almost animatedly with him, Prompto was gleefully narrating the fight they'd _just_ finished with, leaving Ignis and Gladio to trail along in their wake, the former in exhausted silence, the latter in stewing contemplation.

To most, his thought processes were probably a stretch. After all, millions of people lived in Lucis, chances of someone looking exactly like the Crown Prince were good – heck, he'd seen more than a few of them in Insomnia before they left. _Regardless_. This kid... Setting aside the uncanny resemblance, there was just... _something_ that felt so incredibly bone-deep familiar about him.

It was the same kid he'd seen in pictures up at Hammerhead, those eyes were unmistakable. When they first saw the pictures hanging on the wall of Takka's diner, and in Cindy's machineshop, they'd all been incredibly confused about when Noct had come out to visit Cid when they knew for a fact that after his back injury he had never been permitted to leave Insomnia since their return from Tenebrae. Cindy laughed when she overheard them chatting and gleefully told them that it was her friend in the pictures, practically her little brother for what it was worth. His momma had been her personal hero as a little girl and both she, and his step-father, were good friends of Cid so the kid in question was often at Hammerhead.

When Iggy mentioned the resemblance, Cindy was oblivious, while Cid had gotten shifty, pointing out that they needed to pay for the repairs to the Regalia because he was still pissed off with the King. That had tweaked Iggy's tail feathers a bit, but the experience of actually having to _work_ to get what he wanted was deemed character building enough for Noctis that he didn't say anything at the time.

But Gladio had stilled filed it away in his brain because it had been _weird_.

There had been other moments too, parts that made him suspicious. The Nebulawood was well named, full of mist and fog, some of it so thick that it was hard to see your _hand_ in front of your face, never mind a potential Behemoth in the distance. He was ninety-percent sure he'd heard the familiar shattering chimes of the Armiger in that smog, even with Noct at his back, _not_ using it. They'd made a _point_ of not using it around this stranger. Before hand, it wasn't such a big deal – he was very much the Prince of Lucis, he could use his magic if he pleased. But now, Noctis Lucis Caelum was supposed to be dead, and if word got out then they could expect the Empire to become a whole new level of pain in their asses. So around strangers, Noct kept a leash on his powers, at least as much as possible.

Iggy threatened nothing but steamed veggies for the remainder of the trip if he didn't behave, so that was that.

He'd _thought_ it was his ears playing tricks on him the first time he heard it. Then Proelia appeared with fuckin' _earpieces_ for them, said he kept them in a pouch for when he had to do joint hunts and only just remembered when he stuck his hand in the wrong pouch. It fooled Noct and Prom, Iggy was too exhausted to care, but it didn't fool him. Hunters were obsessive about what kit they had and where. Quick drawing tools and the like was essential out in the field because grabbing the wrong pouch could mean your life. He didn't buy the excuse for a second.

Now, it was the conversation he was overhearing.

"Those are Crownsguard uniforms, right?" Proelia had asked a few minutes back, gesturing to the very faint stylised skull they _still_ rather stupidly wore in plain sight. "Weird question: But you wouldn't happen to know anyone who was wondering around outside the Wall about nineteen years ago, would you?"

"Why'd you ask?" Noct drawled curiously.

"Mum and Dad, well, my _biological_ Dad anyway, my actual Dad is Dave and he's awesome," he explained with a dismissive wave of his hand and a grin. "But anyway. My biological Dad was Crownsguard, Ma joined up for a bit where she met him but then the Wall fell around Keycatrich and they had one hell of a disagreement. She left Crownsguard, didn't know she was pregnant with me and never contacted him ever again. He was friends with the Grinch up at Hammerhead, if it helps any."

Friend with Cid who got cagey about the resemblance between this kid and Noct when Iggy brought it up. A mother who was part of the Crownsguard who left after a massive row the night the Wall fell. Yeah. He might have only been five or six at the time, but he definitely remembered his father coming home after _that_ clusterfuck in a fine high temper. It had been something to do with Noct's mother as well, if he recalled right. She had been sick around then... Gladio didn't like what his mind was trying to suggest.

Noctis hummed, "Your mother was Crownsguard?" he asked curiously.

"Only for a little bit," he explained with a shrug, "Apparently she joined up to help on a mission to find someone important to the King. Bit of a whirlwind romance according to her, whenever I got anything _out_ of her. She said she'd never met anyone so clean, or with such nice manners before. Said he wasn't half bad with a sword, which, for her means he must have been pretty damn good with one. I think he might have had blue eyes? She said she was glad I got her eyes, instead of blue ones, so I'm kind of guessing."

Gladio was pretty sure he was screaming internally, even as he glanced over his shoulder to Ignis wondering why the hell the Royal Retainer of perception and genius hadn't yet noticed or interjected, only to see the man listing badly as he sipped and stumbled tiredly in his fancy dress shoes on the mud. He quickly reached back and hauled the man up the small incline with ease, noting how utterly _exhausted_ he looked.

"When we get to Lestallum, we're staying in a hotel, and you're getting a bed," he insisted. It was a mark of how tired he _actually_ was when all he did was nod and nudge his glasses up with a small grateful smile.

"Capitol idea," he agreed slowly, "I shall endeavour not to drown in the bathtub before hand. If you could check on me every now and again, it would be appreciated."

Gladio agreed thoughtlessly, still keeping a hold of Iggy's arm as they walked back, listening to the trio of idiots up ahead as Prompto got it into his head that Proelia's father _had_ to be Cor – as if he couldn't _see_ the physical similarities between the two people in front of him. Gladio wanted to shake him until he rattled some common sense into place within that fluffy blond skull. He was a _photographer_! Surely he could _see_ -

"Noct! Call him! Call him, call him! Have him meet us in Lestallum!" Prompto exclaimed excitedly, bouncing up and down in place.

"Whoa, who said anything about _meeting_ , I was just curious about the guy!" Proelia exclaimed, hands up in refusal even as he laughed.

"Yeah, but, Cor's amazing! And he'll definitely want to meet you! If you're his kid then... surely he should get a choice, right?" the blond asked, trailing off hesitantly. Not _quite_ calling the kid's mother out for taking that choice away, even though judging by the grimace that flickered across Noct-a-like's face he heard it all the same.

"The Marshal has long expressed a desire for family, and lamented that his duties to the Crown prevented him from seeking companionship," Ignis chimed in as they reached a path that thankfully would lead them back to Wiz's before the sun completely sank beneath the horizon.

Gladio only barely swallowed his tongue as the three idiots cheered, Noctis and Noct-a-like even pumping their fists in the same way, next to each other, side by frickin' side, and _he was the only one that saw it_.

Astrals preserve him before he stuck his head in an oven.

 _ **000**_

"If you follow this road here, you'll be able to reach Lestallum before night-fall," young Lumen explained, carefully tracing a finger along the Eastern side of the Disc of Cauthess, heading up towards Rychelle Ley, and then in a sharp loop towards Lestallum. "This area here is a fairly sizable bridge, and towards sunset the roads get busy so drive safe. Here and here beasts are known to run the roads as well so don't be surprised if something jumps out. You can _maybe_ push the speed-limit a bit here and here, but I'd recommend against it this late in the day."

Ignis nodded, firmly impressing the information into his brain as he sipped on his mug of coffee that one of Wiz's granddaughters kindly provided for him at Lumen's request. The chocobo rider had been, at first, incredibly reluctant to let Ignis get back behind the wheel of the Regalia given his current state, pointing out with all the grace of a dualhorn in a china shop that he was exhausted and more of a danger to other people on the road than himself at this moment in time. Noct offered to drive when he got a good look at him, and Ignis had firmly declared that all he needed was some coffee and he would be right as rain, thank you very much, he wished to sleep on an _actual_ bed, not a sofa, tonight.

And that was his argument made.

Young Lumen hadn't been impressed, but after multiple reassurances he relented, and 'allowed' Ignis behind the wheel – but not before he ate something and had two mugs of coffee. Really, the boy was a gem, and he even kept both Prompto and Noct from hovering as he took a half an hour cat-nap.

"And you'll be right behind us, right?" Prompto asked eagerly, his arms filled with a chickabo that the rider had casually just handed him. Ignis was fairly certain that it would take many _years_ for the stars to fade out of Prompto's eyes after that.

Lumen's grin was very _definitely_ a challenge, "I'll do y'one better. I'll beat y'to it."

"So cool!" Prompto gasped, while Ignis arched a doubtful eyebrow.

"Is that so?" he asked lightly, what was, most definitely, _not_ a competitive edge to his tone. "Considering how most obstacles in our respective paths are the same, I cannot think there would be shortcuts to take."

"Nimbus is the fastest bird in Lucis," the young man bragged, and not without due course.

None of them had truly considered the black chocobo to be anything out of the norm when they first saw her. It was well known that black chocobos did not _have_ the vestigial wings that their yellow cousins did, instead still maintaining their full majestic ancestral wing-spans from yesteryear. It wasn't until the incident with Deadeye was resolved and Wiz allowed the other chocobos to leave their stalls that they realised quite how... _large_ the black was by comparison to her brethren. She was taller, broader, and _visibly_ more muscular.

Ignis eyed the young female as she thoroughly enjoyed her pampering at the hands of Wiz, the rancher taking personal care of her as she was evidentially the hatchling of his personal racing bird from his younger years (something he had neglected to inform Lumen of judging by the exclamation from the young man when the fact was brought up and the way Wiz laughed at him).

She... just might, now that he gave it some thought.

"Very well. May the best man win," he announced.

"I intend to," Lumen told him sweetly, making him smirk and mentally promise to wipe the look off his face when they got to Lestallum by having a meal freshly made and laid out for him when he arrived.

It would be the gracious thing to do.

 _ **0000**_

 **Careful Iggy, your competitiveness is showing. Just a little. And your exhaustion. You're not normally this easily goaded when you're well rested. And before people go at me about the Regis thing, there's more going on here. You'll find out later. Nothing in this fic is clear cut, and I have no intention of bashing anyone.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Children of the Dawn**

It was simple maths that such a young phoenix couldn't hope to match a millennia old Basilisk,. Thus, Harry Potter went up in flames, and Lumen Stella Proelia was reborn in them. Fate's plans were saved, but the method in which would be drastically changed. Slash. Prompto/Harry, Luna/Noctis, Cindy/Aranea

 _WARNING:_ I played with the Royal Edition, and recently too, I'm told that this means I've been privy to things that other players have not been, so there may be some spoilers or differences in my writing some scenes because of that.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Six**

No less than five minutes on the road, and Lumen was already regretting the stupid, foolhardy challenge. Ignis was already suffering from severe sleep deprivation and caffeine over-dose, his reflexes were going to be _shot_. What did he think he was playing at making such a stupid challenge? Racing from one side of Duscae to fucking Cleigne. It was dangerous, reckless, and if anything happened it would have been entirely his fault for goading the older man into it.

He groaned slouching in his saddle, feeling his face beginning to burn.

He knew exactly why he had challenged them to that race, he wanted to look cool in front of the cute blond guy. He had just been so... _bright_. And cheerful. And cool. And stylish. Lumen felt frumpy and dirty and really awkward around him, and his very clean and cultured friends. So much so that he found it hard to talk to them outside the Hunt, but Prompto... he was bouncy and cheerful and just... easy to talk to.

He sighed and nudged Nimbus back towards the road, resigning himself to losing the stupid race in order to make sure the group made it to Lestallum without getting into trouble.

Or so he planned, until his phone pinged. A beacon going off at Secullam Pass, hunter by the name of Dali.

Glancing down at the phone he had slotted into his saddle under a clear plastic cover he cursed.

"About face!" he commanded, pulling on Nimbus' reins, the chocobo warking as she did so. He dug his heels into her sides and she shot off back the way they came, streaking across the road as they headed for the south side of the Disc of Cauthess, bolting in front of the very car they had been racing to Lestallum without a backwards glance. He would cut around the south-side, and then straight through Saxham farms.

Gladio huffed as they watched the young man's retreating tailfeathers, "Looks like we won't be having that race," he decided as Prompto practically stood in his chair to get some better photographs.

Noct grimaced, "Do you think we should follow?" he asked anxiously, "I mean, if he's gone haring off like that, then it means someone's hurt, right?"

"I'm sure they'll be fine, Noct," Ignis assured him, sipping his second can of ebony since they left the chocobo outpost. "While I can't say much for his personal hygiene, Lumen Proelia seems to be highly competent and a well respected rescue operative. Likely as not, we may very well get in his way if we were to attempt aid."

"We managed well enough against that Behemoth though," the Prince objected.

"That's true," Gladio agreed lazily, half of him was vibrating with the need to chase the kid – he didn't want to let a potential Royal out of his sight like that, but the kid had been doing this work for years according to Prompto, and he was _good_ at it. Not to mention, he was very clearly strong. Despite only coming up to Gladio's shoulder, the kid had _muscle_ , and not an awful lot of scarring either. He was fast too, and well equipped with weapons and curatives. "Hey, Prompto, what do you know about the Search and Rescue process?" he found himself asking.

"Huh? Oh!" he stowed his camera away and sat back down on his knees, hanging over his chair to talk to them. "Well, when people get their Hunter tags, they also get the beacons and download the phone-apps. He explained on the radio that when someone sets a beacon off, it pings his phone with their location, and gives him info on what Hunt they accepted. Then he goes and gets 'em."

"No hunting?" Noct asked curiously.

Prompto shook his head, "Naw, he was pretty firm on that. His job is to get your ass outta there and healed up, he's not going to do the work for you. He's also not old enough to get a Hunter licence himself, or he wasn't when he did the show. Dunno about now."

"We shall simply have to wait for him in Lestallum, and question the Marshal if he arrives first," Ignis announced, closing the cover on the discussion.

Gladio and Noctis exchanged a glance but settled down all the same. Gladio might have only had a few misgivings, but Noct obviously had more. Digging his book out, he wondered if the Prince had an inkling of the same thing he thought. He heaved a sigh as he opened it up, he wondered how everything would change if he was right. Iggy was going to flip his lid, no doubt about it, mainly because he didn't notice at first glance – not that anyone would blame him given his exhaustion. Prompto would likely be excited on Noct's behalf, congratulating him on finding family. He personally... he wasn't sure. He had his hands full being Noct's Shield, he wasn't sure how he was going to be able to protect another Royal, especially one that _already_ had a fairly dangerous job that he would absolutely not be giving up any time soon. Noctis though... that was going to be a thorny issue. Had it been before the Fall, he would have been ecstatic to find a sibling, entirely welcoming, especially as it would be someone who wouldn't treat him with that same careful difference that everyone else did (save Prompto). Now though... Given the Fall, his father's death, he was going to be sensitive to anything relating to it. Not to mention the mess that likely would have resulted in said brother's conception – there was, what, two years between them? His mother died around then. Had Proelia's mother taken advantage of the King using her position as a Crownsguard? Or had it just been comfort, plain and simple? If so, why had she run?

He pretended to read, unable to get his attention to even focus on his book as his brain ran in repeating circles. He had been five back then, and all he remembered was his father being angry. Perhaps they _had_ known about her? But for whatever reason, let her go? Did she blackmail them, hold her son hostage, or had she just vanished, successfully given them the slip and fled the Crown City where no one could find her?

The long drive passed in silence as they followed along the Disc of Cauthess and up over the tip of Taelpar Crag. They didn't see any sign of Proelia as they drove, and Prompto was definitely looking, practically vibrating in place with a chance to catch the Search and Rescue in action.

The open bridge/tunnel that hugged the edge of the cliff-face as they drove in gave them an absolutely breath-taking view, enough so that he tucked his book away to join the kiddies in their gaping.

And then they burst out into beautiful golden sunlight, and immediately into the heart of Lestallum.

"Wow!" Prompto exclaimed, almost blinded by light.

"Nice," Gladio agreed, catching sight of a few _very_ nice young ladies up ahead.

"This place is pretty big," Noct said with a grin as he sat up straight to look around. Big compared to everything else they'd seen since leaving Insomnia at any rate.

"Haven't enoyed the city life in a while," Gladio agreed, wondering if they had any nightclubs around here. Once he'd checked on Iris, made sure she was alright, would he consider exploring around, maybe try to find some more pleasant company than present to enjoy an evening.

Prompto bounced in his seat, camera plastered to his face, "They've even got a cable car!" he yelped excitedly. Insomnia hadn't used them in over fifty years, it was like seeing an ancient relic in reality.

Ignis hummed, "I'd like to see where it leads," he admitted agreeably, the massive history dork, as they went down a small incline into a carpark.

Noct groaned as they killed the engine, and climbed out. "It's getting hot out here," he complained now that they no longer had the rushing wind to take the sting of the heat from the sun.

"Just need to pull in somewhere cool," the Shield pointed out as he too climbed out.

Noct grumbled an agreement, getting out of Ignis's way as his retainer got out of the car, knees popping as he did so. Specs looked wrecked, no doubt about it. Thank the Six for Prompto though, he took one look at their driver and immediately asked if there was a chance of a decent room for the night – phrasing it in regards to his own comfort, than concern for Iggy's, who would have gotten stiff and unhappy if he thought the others were displeased with his performance.

"Yes. I'm certain we can secure... suitable accommodations nearby," he admitted with a slight hesitation. Despite the many days of camping, he hadn't lost his slight distaste for 'slumming' it, so to speak.

It was _incredibly_ hot as they made their through the narrow cluttered streets of Lestallum, the shadows providing some much needed relief from the sun, but killing what little breeze there was, leaving the air thick and stuffy. It might have only been late afternoon, but evening would be encroaching soon, and Ignis needed sleep as far as the rest of them were concerned. They asked around, and quickly found their way to the local hotel, a nice middle-rung place that probably classed as fancy for out here but would have probably only gained two or three stars back in the Crown City.

And then the ground shook.

Pain blossomed behind Noct's eyes, even as he heard Prompto yelp behind him. It felt like everything was ringing, his vision whiting out, Gladio's voice rumbling in his ears as he squeezed his eyes shut, something...

he could _see_ something behind his eyes.

A single eye, inhuman, coppery-gold, _glaring_ at him as something, images, flickered around it – he couldn't pay them any attention though, he couldn't look away from that baleful glare.

He groaned, feeling as though someone had lodged an ice-spike in the front of his head, right down behind his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Ignis asked, immediately noticing as always, no matter how tired he was.

"My head just started throbbing," he dismissed, not about to tell them about seeing something glaring angrily at him when he closed his eyes. The last thing he needed to deal with were doubts about his mental health, and all the fussing and hovering that would follow if they believed it were a stress related reaction.

"You alright?" Prompto asked gently, his face twisted in concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied before gesturing towards the hotel. Headaches like this could only be resolved with a nap in his experience. Looked like both he _and_ Ignis would be getting an early night tonight.

The group made their way into the hotel, Gladio pulling his phone out to text his sister while the others got all their check-in details handled (under Prompto's name as it was one of the ones that the Empire wouldn't be looking for).

"Gladdy!" a girl's voice exclaimed from the stairwell.

Gladio breathed a sigh of relief, "Iris," he greeted, watching his fifteen year old sister rush down the stairs to them. She looked whole, healthy, and clean. No sign of injuries or bruises, or even missed meals.

"Look at you guys, holding your own out there," she said as she made her way over, giving Noct a sweet smile as she did so. If it were _any_ other guy than his Prince, Gladio would have done something about his baby sister's puppy-crush, but he trusted Noct.

Prompto laughed, the two of them had always gotten along whenever Gladio had brought the gang over to his place. Prompto tried to include Iris in their stupid antics so she wouldn't feel left out in her own home, the two had built quite the friendship. "What can I say?" he laughed, before giving her a quick check up and down, "You look good," he decided, relief colouring his voice.

Iris grinned at him, her eyes a little tight, "All things considered," she said mirthfully. "You guys are staying here, right?" she asked, her eyes flickering between Gladio and Noctis eagerly.

"That's the plan," Ignis agreed.

She was barely holding it together. Gladio's mouth tasted vinegary and tangy, "When you have time, we have catching up to do." She had been there. During the Fall. She had _seen_ the Niff ships raise their city to the ground. And right now, she was holding her wrist tightly, smiling at them in that horrible strained way that was a hundred percent fake, but still relieved, but so close to breaking. They were in hiding, he realised, all of them. And she was trying so hard to pretend that she wasn't a _refugee_ of Insomnia – because the Empire would be on them in seconds if they knew.

"Sure!"

 _ **000**_

Lumen rode into Lestallum well after dark, bruised, hungry, and tired.

He waved to a few of the ladies who called to him by name, chuckling and shaking his head when a few offered to buy him dinner. He asked where Holly was, and got his usual brand of heckling from the boisterous women until one of them finally gave him the info he wanted. Swinging off Nimbus' back, he lead his favourite girl through the back-streets, greeting a few people as he passed, stopping to let a few kids pet his girl who quite happily let the clever little fingers scritch her in all her favourite places, and finally reached the little alcove that Holly and Dave had fixed up for Nimbus's use while they were in Lestallum. It was just a small cut out of a wall where once there had been pipes, but that line had gone defunct so Holly had ripped them out, and stuffed it with straw and affixed a gate to it. It was a tight squeeze, but there was enough room for Nimbus to curl up, and if he were tired enough, he too could sleep in there if he didn't want to disturb Holly.

But right now, he wanted a shower more than he didn't want to disturb his step-mother (she'd finally worn Dave down enough to make things official between them, Lumen had jokingly called her mum, and nearly gotten the stuffing hugged out of him for it. He liked to think his real mother would have liked Holly, he definitely did).

He let himself into Holly's place, she wasn't home yet, so he helped himself to the fridge – grabbing several ingredients and whipping up a quick veggie stir-fry with chocobean sauce. He dished up a plate for her for when she got in and tucked it into the oven so it would stay warm, wolfed his meal down, washed the dishes up and put them aside to dry before writing her a note telling her about the food before going to get a shower.

Today had been a close call, Dali would need a few months to recover properly, but he would live, all limbs intact at that, small mercies. Lumen had thrown enough gil at the Saxham outpost motel to put him up for a few days and sent a message up to Meldacio to come and pick him up. A few hunters would be around to collect him and take him back to his own home soon enough, and the money he'd given the hotel would be put into the pot for the next poor soul that came by to stay when they didn't have the gil for it. Lumen very firmly believed in paying it forward out here. His business was in saving lives, and through that he had an understanding with the local hotels and motels. Amazingly other people had also taken to following his lead, paying forward an extra day and asking the staff to put it in the kitty for someone in need further down the line.

Out of the shower, he towelled himself off, combed and clipped his long hair up out of the way, and cleaned up a few bits and bobs here and there. He had an open invitation to stay at the Leville, he'd saved the owner's son a while back and he had been so grateful he'd told all of his staff that Lumen and his chocobo would _never_ have to pay for lodgings, but for Lumen, he had just been doing his job and didn't feel comfortable taking advantage of that. So he often stayed with Holly instead because her only demand was that he keep tidy, and pick up after himself. The little Harry voice in his head poked him into doing a little bit more though – which was how he found himself doing her dishes and laundry for her whenever he stayed over. There had been no complaints yet, and she got him moogleberry cheesecake as a thank you, so win-win.

He gave passing thought to popping his head into the Leville to talk to Prompto and Noctis, they said they would be calling this 'Cor' guy to come and meet him, and it made his stomach twist and knot at the thought, both in a mixture of excitement and trepidation. He didn't want Holly or Dave to think he wasn't grateful, or that he didn't love them, and yes it was a stupid fear to have, but it lingered in the back of his mind all the same as he summoned his pillow and blankets from the Crystalline and got himself comfortable on the couch.

His mother had called his father a soft coward, too clean, and clueless about life out here. When the others heard this they said it was absolutely not true, that Cor was the coolest and the strongest.

Lumen would withhold judgement until he met the man. That was fair, right?

 _ **000**_

Annoyingly, no matter how late he rode in the night before, he would always wake with the dawn, no matter how little sleep he got. He'd slept the sleep of the dead, not even Holly coming in last night had woke him, and he knew she _had_ because the oven had been turned off, and her stir-fry had been eaten, the dirty place left to soak in the sink. She was also fast asleep in her arm-chair to the left of him, the TV on with the volume turned down low showing some kind of cartoon about a chibi-malboro.

He stretched unhappily, feeling his joints popping before he got up and waddled to the bathroom to sort himself out.

Business done, he carefully covered Holly with his blankets and tucked a pillow under her head so she wouldn't get such an awful crick in her neck, before he got changed and slipped out to go and feed Nimbus.

The children were there, as expected, holding greens just outside of her reach, shrieking and giggling when she tried to snap them away only to have them pulled away as the children thought their fingers were about to be eaten. Thankfully she knew it was a game, and that he would be coming to feed her soon, so she wasn't getting worked up like a regular chocobo would have at constantly being denied food and being screamed at.

He laughed and caught one of the little rascals, tickling him into submission, letting the others hang off his back and arms as he stood up, all of them dangling off of him with yells and laughter. He showed them how to feed her without losing any fingers in the process, the children squeaking happily in excitement as she daintily took the greens from their open palms and swallowed them down before nosing them for more. Only once every handful had gone, and every child had their chance to feed her, did he drag the two buckets over – one of feed, the other of water.

Then he went and got breakfast of his own.

He visited Andrew's skewer stand, gleefully digging into the grilled Chickatrice skewers as they chattered about things changing in the local area. His girlfriend had proposed to him last week, they were planning to have a winter wedding when it wasn't so hot, then having their honeymoon down in Galdin Quay, just a weekend, they couldn't afford any more. A Niff base had popped up not too far away at Coernix Bypass though, best he be careful around there as everyone knew daemon activity seemed to pick up where-ever there were Magitek troopers in large numbers.

Eventually he found himself outside the Leville, once again surrounded by children, skewer in his mouth as he showed them how to do cat's cradle with a length of string.

That was the scene Cor walked into after receiving a text from his Prince asking for a meeting in Lestallum, saying they needed to talk _urgently_ about an issue nineteen years ago. He stopped in his tracks watching as the young man carefully allowed the little boy in front of him to collect the string from his fingers, and then pulled a single section – the whole thing snapping shut and tying the boy's hands together.

Immediately all the children were shrieking and laughing as the little boy howled in offence.

The hair was the wrong colour, but the style was painfully nostalgic.

He had only ever known one woman with eyes that colour, and staring at him now, he could see her in his face, the young man who laughed freely and loudly as he was tackled by children, letting them push him down and climb on top of him. He then caught all three of the little hellions on top of him and rolled over, commenting loudly on how uncomfortable this mattress was as he pinned the three down under his arms – being careful not to crush them as the three wriggled, screaming and laughing.

That was the scene that Prompto, Ignis, Gladio, Jared, and Talcott stepped out to witness.

Prompto laughed and whipped his camera out, bouncing forward to take photos of the gleefully wriggling pile on the floor, Talcott laughed brightly but didn't join in, his Grandfather's hand tight on his shoulder, the over over the man's mouth as he stared in shock at the young man in front of him. Gladio folded his arms, grimacing a little as he looked to Ignis who had stopped, frozen, and then paled as he choked on his coffee.

"Gladio," the man coughed as he cleared his throat, voice faint as he took in the scene.

"Your eyes ain't playin' tricks on ya, Iggy," the Shield assured him.

"How could I have missed – " he trailed off faintly as the young man sat up, snickering gleefully as he released the children who immediately ran off laughing screaming about how he was going to catch them.

Gladio shrugged a shoulder, "You were exhausted. The other two have no excuse," he grunted as he made his way down the stairs. "How was last night?" he asked the chocobo rider as he got to his feet, not even bothering to dust himself off as he grinned up at him. Dirty kid, Iggy was going to have his hands full with this one, Gladio decided with a huff of amusement.

"He'll live," the kid declared happily, "Might be a while before he's fighting fit, but I got there in time," he said, clenching a fist in determination, green eyes bright.

Gladio nodded, and held a fist out in congratulations. The kid laughed and cheerfully bumped fists with him. Yep. No matter how hard they tried, there was little to _no_ chance of their ever getting him to stop his Search and Rescue operations, and in all honesty? Gladio kind of didn't want to. All the Royals had to serve in the military at some point, usually they took the time during their pilgrimage to the tombs to do so, it was well known that unless you served and visited the tombs of your forebears that a King, or Queen, could not ascend to the throne. The Ring of the Lucii would not accept them. Lumen may not have been military, but he was performing a service to the people, hell, if you looked at it in the context that the Hunters were a separate branch of the Crownsguard then he was technically in service.

He spotted Cor lurking in the shadows of a near-by building then, and glanced over at Ignis meaningfully.

Freshly washed and rested, the retainer was far more on point and noticed immediately, casually sliding himself into the conversation without a ripple, "Would you like to join us, Lumen?" he asked kindly, smiling at the young man, "I believe you are the closest we have to a local at hand."

The young man grinned, "Sure. But I imagine the sights are a bit of a secondary priority compared to the markets?" he asked slyly.

Ignis straightened, interested despite himself, "Markets, you say?" he asked intently.

"Oh yes," Jared interjected calmly as he hobbled down to join them, Talcott at his side. "Lestallum is famous for its produce markets."

Lumen beamed at him, "You're well informed, sir."

Jared smiled kindly, "Now, now, there's no need to 'sir' me. Jared Hester, and my grandson Talcott, a pleasure to meet you," he introduced, gently nudging his wide-eyed son forward.

"Hi, I'm Lumen, it's nice to meet you too," he greeted, squatting down to grin at the young boy.

"You look like the Prince," the ten year old blurted before turning pink and ducking down behind his grandfather.

Lumen laughed, "Somehow I think he's probably a lot cleaner than I am, and with better manners!"

"You'd be astonished," Ignis muttered under his breath, making Gladio snort hard enough to hurt. Noctis had been an absolute nightmare to get into the bath as a child, even Gladio had heard of the epic battles between nursemaids and royalty, and the resulting flooding.

"Well, you guys go on ahead. I think I'll wait for the others," he announced with a lazy stretch.

Talcott opened his mouth to say that this had been his idea, only for Ignis to sweep him up off his feet, turning the objection into a startled yelp and then laughter as he was slung over the retainer's shoulder like a sack of potatos.

Gladio waited until the group had left, Lumen leading the way and telling them about the markets, Talcott laughing and wriggling on Iggy's shoulder, acting his age for once in a long time. It took until the group were entirely out of sight before his Marshal peeled himself out of the shadows to approach.

"Tell me I'm bein' paranoid," Gladio challenged him, canting a sideways glance in the older man's direction.

Cor sighed deeply, "I wish I could."

Gladio clenched his fists, "So the King really had an affair on his wife's death bed?" he demanded, the words scraping out of his mouth like broken glass.

Icy blue eyes glared at him, before the man sighed deeply, "It was... more complicated than that. Is Noctis still upstairs?" he asked, and as much as Gladio wanted to refuse because _**this**_ was the last thing Noct needed dropped onto his lap, he still deserved to know. He nodded, and the Marshal gestured to one of the tables in front of the Leville, "Then we wait."

 _ **0000**_

 **BOOM. Chapter done.**

 **Not everything is as it seems, but yes, Lumen is in fact Noct's younger brother – it hasn't been a double fake out, I promise.**


End file.
